Repeating as sectional champion wasn’t just a cause for celebration for Kokomo’s girls soccer team. It was redemption.
The Kats came full circle Saturday afternoon. After losing their first four games of the season, the Wildkats claimed the Kokomo Sectional championship by crushing rival Logansport 7-0 in the final.
“It feels amazing,” said Kokomo forward Casey Connor, who scored a natural hat trick. “Senior year, we started out so rough. Just coming out and showing everybody that we really are one of the best Kokomo soccer teams to come through here [felt good]. It’s just great because we knew we could do it all along.”
Breanna Allen opened the scoring and finished with two goals for Kokomo, Connor netted three times and the Wildkats (10-8) got strikes from Jordan Parkhurst and Ashli Minor.
For the first 39 minutes, there was no indication the Wildkats would run away with the game. Allen scored in the sixth minute on a soaring drive from 23 yards that was too high for Logan goalie Jordan Graham. But for most of the opening half, it was Logan that applied more pressure, forcing Kokomo goalie Kristen Clason into four saves.
Then, 47 seconds before halftime, Parkhurst popped a close shot over Logan’s defense and into the goal to double Kokomo’s advantage. At that point, the Wildkats smelled blood.
Kokomo moved into the attack again and Madison Waltermath’s sharp pass found Connor in the box. Connor juked past a defender and scored to the far post to put Kokomo up 3-0 at halftime. The two strikes before halftime were crippling to Logansport, which finished the season 9-10.
“I thought we played 33, 34 minutes of pretty darn good soccer,” Logan coach Todd Reiff said. “[Allen’s first goal] was a hell of a shot and it went in high — 1-0, who cares? I thought we were still very much in it. They got that second goal and that wasn’t the one, it was that third goal right at the very end that I just knew it. Right then, you could just feel the wind come completely out of our sails.”
Kokomo ended any doubt when Connor struck again on her squad’s opening rush of the second half. Waltermath again fed the senior forward, who scored from close range just 12 seconds after the start of the second half.
“After we scored in 12 seconds in the second half, I thought that we broke their spirit — hopefully,” Connor said. “You never know, but that’s when I thought, ‘we’ve got this.’”
Connor added her third in the 46th minute on an easy tap-in. Allen scored her second when she blasted to the far post in the 57th minute and Minor closed the scoring with a looping shot from outside the box off a feed from Brittney Hildebrand in the 76th minute.
“They just seemed to back down more [after halftime],” said Kokomo defender Kali Ackison, who shadowed Logan’s main threat Lindsay Rich. “We just kept going because we didn’t want it to be a close game and if they scored, it’d put more pressure on us, so we just kept going at ’em. They played really well too, but we just played more as a team, and as well as we know we can.”
Kokomo got the shutout as Clason totaled eight saves, including a diving stop at the feet of Rich with eight minutes left. By then, Ackison had been relieved of her duty of shadowing Logan’s star midfielder. She’d already done enough.
“Lindsay Rich is a stud and Kali Ackison did a phenomenal job just being annoying,” Kokomo coach Myles Geary said. “That’s what really took them out of their game because she is a goal threat no matter where she is.”
Ackison had played as a flank defender during the regular season meeting, but was sent out to stick with Rich exclusively Saturday.
“She’s really fast so I had to stay real close to her or give her a couple steps sometimes,” Ackison said. “She has a really good touch so I had to stay in front of her. Wherever she was, I had to be. I bet she got tired of me being with her.”
Kokomo advances to play McCutcheon in the Logansport Regional at 7 p.m. Wednesday. The Mavs beat the Kats 3-2 in the regular season.
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SOCCER: Kokomo crushes Logansport
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