The MCHS Soccer Aces traveled to Vincennes Tuesday night to take on their former Big 8 foe, the Lincoln Alices, winning 5-0. The Aces scored 2 quick goals in the 7th and 8th minutes of play to take an early lead. Checco Terna scored the first goal, with an assist from Beau Stipp, which was quickly followed by Britton Heinrich scoring for the 2-0 lead. Heinrich scored again in the 31st minute, assisted by Rayce Loudermilk. Stipp scored the 4th Aces goal of the half 2 minutes later on an assist from Jack Deisher with a key pass from Eli Bertram. Checco scored his 2nd goal of the match after halftime on an assist from Gui Silva, giving the Aces the final 5-0 lead. For the match the Aces took 36 shots, 28 on frame, created 13 chances, took 3 corners and had 4 interceptions. The Alices took 2 shots, 1 on frame.
Our passing & possession game was very good in this one, but Lincoln helped us out a little in that regard as they didn't put a lot of pressure on us when we had the ball. Likewise though, we kind of matched their intensity in that same area for a good portion of the start of the match. We're wanting us to establish our aggressiveness to, and movement off, the ball and set the tempo early in these matches, but sometimes we seem to ease in to these games rather than coming out with that attacking attitude in defense and attack. Hopefully we can develop that mentality a bit more as we head into the playoffs in a couple weeks, because if we can come out with the desire to try to take control from the start, we can be pretty dangerous. There was a lot of good in this one though, especially the way we moved the ball around and consistently looked for the best options to score against a defense that was packing it in on us. As we've gotten into the season, we're starting to see a lot more of that type of defending from the other teams, and it's given us some trouble at times. In the 1st half of the last game, against Olney, we struggled with solving that, so it was good to see us handle it better this time. Olney did a good job of being physical with us though and they pressured the ball more quickly. We'll probably vstart to see more of that, so working through those types of games will be a big test for us.
The Aces then beat Lincoln 4-0 in the JV contest. Gavin Smith scored the first goal in the 12th minute to give the Aces the 1-0 lead. Landon Lagow scored in the 15th minute, assisted by Smith. Lagow scored his 2nd goal of the match on an assist from Eli Bertram to give the Aces a 3-0 lead. Smith completed the scoring when he notched his 2nd goal on an assist from Drew Glick. Carter Horrall and Glick each had a save in goal.
The match started poorly for us, as the Alices were able to keep the ball on our side of the field for most of the first 10 minutes or so. We fought through that though and slowly started to build up some attacks, and then especially after Smith hit that first goal, we turned it around the rest of the way and controlled the match.
For the season, the Aces' record now stands at 12 - 0 - 1 (JV: 4 - 1). Their next match will be a Varsity/JV contest on Thursday October 3rd at 5:30 pm against a very good Princeton squad at the Wabash Valley College field.