WINONA LAKE - They've matched the Panthers before, but Tuesday in Winona Lake, the Cougars surpassed them.
During the NorthWood Panthers and Lakeland Christian Academy Cougars annual matchups, the two squads ended a game in a tie in 2005, but LCA had never come out on top.In their latest showdown, LCA got down 1-0 within the first four minutes, but fought back for a 2-1 victory, improving to 3-0 on the year.
"We give three goals before a game, and one of our goals was to execute on our opportunities," LCA coach Jon Hoover said. "We just came off a game we won 1-0, but probably should have scored four goals. I really pushed in practice (Monday) that we need to finish and capitalize on our opportunities. The team did that."
Early on, NorthWood was the aggressor, getting to loose balls and pushing the issue. In that mode, the Panthers struck first when junior Cam Seitz netted a goal off a miss with 36:29 remaining in the first half.
The Panthers remained quicker to balls for a little while longer, but after Hoover made a switch in his defense, the Panthers' offense became completely stymied.
"We moved (senior Sam Cole) around from swinging the midfield to stopper," Hoover said. "He really hunkered down and did a great job at the stopper position. He just made a presence there that we needed to prevent them from breaking through."
With the NorthWood offense slowed, LCA made its offensive move.
LCA had begun to put more pressure on the NorthWood defense, but junior Jamie Duchane finally burst through with a goal at the 27:41 mark, knotting the game at 1-1.
On the goal, the girl playing on the boys team, along with senior teammate Kristin Yocum, actually had two chances to convert the goal, but after missing her first shot, rebounded another LCA miss, getting her team on the board.
"Jamie Duchane is a tough player," Hoover said. "She belongs out here with the guys, and one day, she's going to make a great college player. She loves to get in there and go shoulder to shoulder, making contact. She scored tonight, and is just a great player all around."
Enabling the Cougars to get the goal was good ball movement, which was a constant throughout the 80 minutes of play.
"We went together, five or six passes at a time," Hoover said. "As a coach, that's what I love to see."
As the defense continued to do its job, the offense supplied another goal at the 22:28 mark when junior Jakob Hahn scored the winning goal off an assist from classmate Scott Koontz.
Over the next 58-plus minutes, NorthWood had a couple of chances at a goal, but LCA had even better opportunities.
At the 11:53 mark in the second half, Koontz actually found himself and NorthWood sophomore goalkeeper Maliq Taylor face-to-face, but had his ball bounced off the sidebar. Four minutes later, junior Jarod Franklin scored on an excellent pass from senior Nathan Zuercher, but an offsides penalty nullified the pretty play.
"We could have scored a couple more goals," Hoover acknowledged. "We're still growing. It's exciting to see that if we can come out in a game like this, and win 2-1 with that many missed chances, what we're going to be able to do by the end of the season."
The Cougars are still growing because 10 players from last year's team are gone, nine of which have graduated. Of the graduated players, one is last year's star Joel Franklin, who is set to begin his collegiate soccer career at Grace College.
"Joel is a great addition to Grace College, but a great loss to Lakeland," Hoover said. "We probably graduated somewhere between 80 and 90 percent of our goals last year. That hurts us, but at the same time helps us. I think a lot of times when you have a player like that, you just look at that one player. But we've been stressing this year that we're going to move together up and down the field as 11 players, and different people are scoring goals every game."
The team will gets its next opportunity to grow together Thursday at Bethany Christian, where the match gets under way at 6:30 p.m.
