Lone Peak’s girls soccer team churned out a dream 40 minutes in the second half at American Fork on Thursday.
In a showdown between the No. 2 and 3 teams in 6A, the Knights ripped off six goals in the second half as they ran away with the 6-0 victory in their most complete performance of the season.
The win ran Lone Peak’s winning streak to eight straight, and coach Shantel Jolley said it was nice to see her team finish off a game in regulation after its three previous wins all went into overtime, and two ultimately into penalties.
“The last three games we’ve had tight games, double overtime, and so we kind of wanted to finally get one where we weren’t going into overtime and playing 100 minutes, so that was kind of my challenge to them today,” Jolley said.
Even though breakthrough didn’t come until the second half, Lone Peak’s attack was dangerous from the get-go as it put American Fork’s defense under pressure early in the match.
Jolley reminded her players at halftime to keep winning the little battles — headers, 50-50 balls, physicality — and they’d be just fine.
Just two minutes into the second half, the breakthrough came as Indy Jackson elevated in traffic to head in a corner kick for the 1-0 lead.
Jolley said that type of header goal is something she’s stressed with her team all season.
“We’ve really tried to work on our heading this year because it seems to be kind of a lost art these days. And so we try to work on improving in that area, because winning balls in the air, it changes games,” Jolley said.
“They’ve been great this year, basically buying into what we’ve been trying to do and change.”
After that initial breakthrough from Jackson, the floodgates opened for Lone Peak as it scored three more goals over the next 12 minutes to build a 4-0 lead by the 54th minute.
Sadie Stratton converted a penalty kick in the 44th minute to make it 2-0, and then Sasha Castro scored two goals four minutes apart to push the lead to 4-0.
“We really just started flying,” Stratton said. “That’s what we’ve been training for this entire season. We’ve had a few rough bumps at the beginning of the season but really figured it out.”
Jane Christensen stretched the lead to 5-0 in the 69th minute on a driven ball from distance over the American Fork keeper, and then Castro polished off her hat track by converting on a through ball in the 72nd minute.
“We all just knew we needed that,” Stratton said. “I feel like we really needed that. It’s been close games past few games. We’ve gone into PKs more than we wanted to.”
With its third straight region win and eighth overall, Lone Peak seems to be on firm footing after a sluggish 1-3 start to the season with losses to Park City, Green Canyon and Crimson Cliffs.
“We’re finally just kind of figuring each other out,” Jolley said. “We changed some things up, and the girls have really kind of responded to the changes we’ve made from earlier this season.
“The new ones are starting to realize kind of what it takes to be in this program and the culture it takes to keep winning.”