KENDALLVILLE - The Wawasee Lady Warriors and Warsaw Lady Tigers will square off in the semifinal round of the girls soccer sectional Thursday at 7 p.m. at East Noble High School.
The ways in which they advanced out of Monday's opening round were vastly different."We didn't put things together quite as well as we would have liked," said Wawasee coach Dodd Cunningham. "We did the things we needed to do, but the girls picked times to do it, we didn't do it the whole game."
The Lady Warriors took a 2-0 lead in the first half with goals from junior standout Mallory Rondeau, her 28th and 29th goals of the season, but Wawasee needed junior Sarah Rozow's goal in the 77th minute to beat East Noble 3-2.
Warsaw, on the other hand, had a much easier go of it against winless Lakeland.
Sophomore standout Meredith Hollar scored the first three goals of the game for the Lady Tigers, who went on to lead 5-0 at halftime and win 11-0.
Hollar finished the game with five goals and set new school records for goals in a game and season.
Her five-goal performance topped the four-goal efforts of Lauren Witzky (2001 against NorthWood) and Emily Hickerson (2007 against Columbia City).
Hollar has scored 21 goals this season, which broke the record of 20 set by Ashley Kitchens in 2002.
"That's good work by her," Warsaw coach Dan Miller said of Hollar, who's previous best in a game this season was two goals. "She's a finisher. She's up to 21 goals now. That's solid for a sophomore. She's a very good player."
Warsaw improved to 10-4-3 with the dominating win, while Wawasee upped its record to 9-5-3.
Their semifinal game Thursday will be a rematch of a game that was played in Warsaw on Oct. 2 - a game that finished in a 2-2 tie.
"We're looking forward to playing again Thursday, but we're gonna have to play better than we did tonight to get through the next game," said Cunningham.
Trailing 2-0, the host Lady Knights got a goal from Brianna Decamp in the 46th minute of play. Decamp later tied the game in the 73rd minute with a penalty kick.
Rozow then scored the game-winner off an assist from senior Darian Conard.
The sectional at East Noble is being played on the school's football field, which is brand new field turf.
"This is the first time we've played on a field like this," said Miller. "I love the fact that it's fast. We have a lot of speed, and I think we have a very skilled team. We're gonna need all that speed and skill against Wawasee. I think it's going to be a great game. Dodd (Cunningham) has a good team, they have a good player in Mallory Rondeau. We're a good team. We played to a draw earlier in the season. I think it's gonna be exciting."
Against Lakeland, which finished its season with an 0-14 record and scored just four goals all season, the Lady Tigers were simply the better team.
It took less than 10 minutes for Hollar to score two goals, and she had a hat trick with nearly 18 minutes remaining in the first half.
Emma Dickerhoff and Marissa Schramm also scored first-half goals for Warsaw.
To go with Hollar's two goals in the second half, the Lady Tigers also got scores from Kelly Wildman, Hannah Cutshall, Gabby Monroy and Madison Myers.
