Lady Aces Soccer Report From Coach Ed Berberich:

The Lady Aces soccer team traveled to Mt. Vernon Saturday morning to play their 2nd match of the season, losing 2 - 8. Mt Vernon scored their first goal in the 11th minute, and the score remained 0 - 1 until a flurry of goals in the last 3 minutes of 1st half play left the Aces down 1 - 3 heading into the 2nd. Mt Vernon scored 2 quick goals, at the 38th and 39th minutes to take a 3 goal lead before the Aces responded right as the half ended when Maya Smith scored a goal on an assist from Rylie Webb. My Vernon added 5 goals in the 2nd half, while Webb would add a goal for the Aces to produce the final score. For the game, the Lady Aces took 16 shots, 10 on frame, created 15 additional scoring chances, and had 6 corner kicks. Mt Vernon took 13 shots, 10 on frame and had 4 corner kicks.

We were missing 11 players, & multiple starters, for this match so we needed the players who were there to step up and play well against a tough opponent, and they certainly did. It was a game of 2 half’s as we came out strong and pretty much dominated the run of play in the 1st half, but started wearing down towards the end of the 1st and through the 2nd, which is where Mt Vernon started to take charge. In that 1st half of strong play we outshot Mt Vernon 10-4, and the 10 we had were all good to great opportunities. They just did a better job of capitalizing on their chances so even though we feel we were the better team in that half, you wouldn’t have known it from looking at the scoreboard. This being their 9th game of the season and only our 2nd so far, & with us missing so many players, the conditioning difference isn’t a big surprise. We’ll need to continue working on that & on our finishing, but to get so many opportunities against a strong team is a really good sign of where we can get to if we keep improving. We’ve had so many girls playing hard in practice this whole season that I expect that we’ll continue to get that improvement. Our biggest obstacle will be the imbalance in our schedule, with almost all of our games taking place within a 2 - 3 week span. That’s a lot of soccer in a short timeframe so we’ll just have to do our best to battle through the fatigue that will doubtless be there. All in all, despite what the final score ended up being, us coaches were very pleased with what we saw.

The Lady Aces are now 0 - 2 on the season. Work is currently being done on adding a home game on Saturday April 13th against Metro East Lutheran-Edwardsville. If that doesn’t work out, the next match will be at home on Monday April 15th against Salem.