Thursday, May. 26, 2011
Proving they can
Harrisonville shuts out two teams on way to quarters
Stephanie Yeagle
Stephanie Yeagle/Democrat Missourian
The Harrisonville girls’ soccer team holds up their Class 2, District 12 championship trophy. The Lady Wildcats defeated Bolivar, 7-0, earning their second straight district title.
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close“Ultimately, we got the job done,” Harrisonville head girls soccer coach Dan Coleman said. “We’re still alive, moving forward one game at a time.”
The Lady Wildcats, in their 18th shutout of the season, blanked Logan-Rogersville, 3-0, in the Class 2 sectional game May 24.
“Logan-Rogersville was exactly who the scouting reports suggested,” Coleman said. “(They were) a very physical and good defensive unit. They contested every ball and fought extremely hard the entire 80 minutes. I was impressed with their fire.”
Coleman said that Harrisonville, on the other hand, came out flat.
“I’m hoping we got that out of our system,” he continued. “There are no excuses, so I won’t list the possibilities. We simply have to focus on the 80 minutes in front of us and start better if we have any hope of making a deeper run in the playoffs and ultimately to St. Louis.”
Fortunately for the Lady Wildcats, forward Anna Holden was on top of her game.
“I play OK,” the modest junior said. “Anybody could have scored. I just happened to be there at the right time.”
Holden was there at the right time three times, as she scored all three goals against Logan-Rogersville. The shut out was by Harrisonville goalkeeper Sara Clarke.
“Logan-Rogersville’s game plan was to serve long balls through and over our back line and run on to them,” Coleman said. “We were letting them do this by not putting enough pressure on the ball in the middle of the field. We were stretched out, giving them too much time and space. At halftime, we talked about tightening the formation and compressing the space, helping us to better pressure their distribution. That seemed to do the trick. We were a different, much better team in the last 40 minutes, than in the first.”
The victory is Harrisonville’s second straight sectional win.
“It feels pretty good because we are doing things no other girls soccer team has done in Harrisonville,” Holden said. “People at our school don’t think we can actually play with other schools so it feels good to prove them wrong and show them what we can do.”
The Lady Wildcats, now 22-4, will host the 20-2-1 Moberly Lady Spartans Saturday at 1 p.m.
“I don’t know much about them, but I think it will be a tough game,” Holden said. “They have to be pretty good to have gotten this far. We are just taking it one game at a time and try not to think about future games and try to focus right now and not get beat. We can play with any team if we can keep our heads straight.”
Harrisonville was defeated in quarterfinals by Notre Dame de Sion last season. For results of the game, check out next week’s issue.
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Harrisonville goalkeeper Sara Clarke knows a thing or two about shutouts.
The senior has earned 16 shutouts this season alone, including the 7-0 victory over No. 1 seeded Bolivar in the Class 2, District 12 championship game May 18.
“We thought it was going to be a tougher game,” Clarke said. “It still felt good to beat the number one seed and show everyone that we should have been the number one.”
The Lady Wildcats, 21-4, led 4-0 at halftime and in the second period, Kaley Harkrader scored the fifth goal around the 30 minute mark when she took a shot and the ball rolled right past the Bolivar goalkeeper.
Fifteen minutes later, Anna Holden broke away from the Lady Liberator defense and scored. Holden scored again in the same fashion with about seven minutes left to play, sealing Harrisonville’s 7-0 victory.
“Being a back-to-back champion in anything is special,” Harrisonville head coach Dan Coleman said. “Duplicating success, I feel, is the ultimate goal and can be an extremely difficult thing to accomplish. So we’re pleased with the title of two-time district champion. However, we’re not content with just repeating. We’re determined to go above and beyond. We’re working to blaze a new path for Harrisonville soccer. So now, the focus quickly shifts to the next stage of the state playoffs.”
And Clarke’s 17th shutout is her personal best.
“It’s awesome,” she said. “I’m usually not one of those people that takes personal stats, but it’s cool that I am breaking my own personal record.”
Clarke said not all those shutouts can be solely attributed to her and credits the Harrisonville defense.
“I have a really good defense that backs me up and a really good team,” she said. “Usually the ball doesn’t come back to me. When it is coming at me, I either think ‘I got this,’ but sometimes it freaks me out.”
Clarke started out playing forward, but her true love is playing goalie.
“Knowing that you can make or break the game is so cool,” she said.
And now the Lady Wildcats have their second straight district championship title under their belts.
“It feels kind of not real at the moment,” Clarke said. “I feel like we are playing a regular season game. It feels awesome after every game. I can’t believe we are going this far, because no other team has gone this far in school history. We want to leave our legacy for all the seniors.”
For more photos of the district soccer game, visit www.demo-mo.com/sports/galleries/.
