The Cheney girls’ soccer team halted their five-game losing streak in impressive fashion last week, notching a pair of shutouts with home wins over Deer Park, 11-0, and Colville, 4-0.
The Lady Hawks recorded three hat tricks in Tuesday’s game with the Stags, who were missing their leading scorer Sierra Lewis. Jaisa Holland got the scoring going with a goal in the sixth minute, followed by Chae Brown in the 21st minute.
Sierra Dixon recorded the first hat trick, scoring in the 24th minute with an assist by Holland, followed by an unassisted goal in the 26th minute and the third goal in the 28th minute off an assist from Brown. Kendyl Cone’s unassisted goal in the 39th minute sent Cheney into the half with a 6-0 lead.
Brown’s two goals in the 48th and 57th minute, both off assists by Cone, gave her the hat trick with Holland’s scores in the 59th minute, assisted by Abby Hammermeister, and the 67th minute, assisted by Georgianna Black and Sarah Fix, giving Cheney its third hat trick. Cone capped the scoring with her second goal, assisted by Carlie Fox, in the 75th minute.
Cheney out shot Deer Park 21-5 with goalkeeper Montana Andrews making five saves.
Lady Hawks’ head coach Nils Radtke said the Stags were definitely a different team than the first time they played, a 7-2 Cheney road win in which Lewis accounted for both her team’s goals. Cheney wasn’t trying to run up the score, he said, but the Stags (1-6, 3-8 3 points sixth) were double-teaming in the midfield area, which allowed the Lady Hawks to get behind the defensive back line with the ball and open lanes to the goal.
“When we’ve got a breakaway, it’s hard to tell the girls to turn around,” Radtke said.
Radtke and his coaching staff had also been looking for other players to get into the scoring besides Brown, who has accounted for 16 of the team’s 31 goals before last week’s games.
“Hopefully that was a confidence booster for them,” Radtke said.
Thursday it was Brown, however, getting three of Cheney’s four scores, with a Colville own goal in the 62nd minute being the final. Brown scored unassisted goals in the ninth, 42nd and 56th minutes as Cheney faced a stiffer challenge from an improving Colville (0-7, 1-9, 0 points seventh) that lost 7-0 to the Lady Hawks on Sept. 13.
Radtke said Cheney worked a lot in practice last week on possessing the ball better, and against Colville executed that almost to a fault because the girls often looked more to pass than score. They’ll need possession skills and scoring confidence in their only game this week, Thursday with third-place East Valley on the road.
The Knights (5-3, 6-5 15 points) scored two goals in the first five minutes of each half and three in the final 40 minutes to beat Cheney 5-2 Sept. 20, and are coming off a 2-1 win over second-place West Valley last Thursday. Radtke said the Lady Hawks need to avoid let downs like they had the first time around, play hard from the opening whistle and play with confidence if they are to run their winning streak to three straight this Thursday.
“I think if we play like we did in the Pullman game (2-0 loss), I think we can take them,” Radtke said.
John McCallum can be reached at jmac@cheneyfreepress.com.
Reader Comments(0)