Marian soccer masters Marengo

E-mail this story

Print this story

Share

MARENGO – Marian Central’s girls soccer team stuck with its offensive game plan Wednesday after being called for four offside penalties in the first 10 minutes against Marengo.

It paid off for the Hurricanes en route to a 4-1 victory in their IHSA Class 2A Marengo Regional semifinal match.

Junior Shannon Grady notched a hat trick for the second-seeded ’Canes (17-4-1),
Laura Lefevour scored and had an assist, and Lauren Grady provided two assists for Marian, which advanced to play top-seeded Hampshire at 4 p.m. Friday in the final.

“We knew if we could push up on their defense, we’d be able to get some good scoring chances,” Shannon Grady said. “We found each other on our cross-passes and were able to push their defense back.”

Marian got off 29 shots against Marengo goalkeeper Brittany Barrier, but ’Canes coach Jose Arias was more pleased with the number of quality scoring chances than with the shots.

“The scoreboard may read 29 shots, but some of those weren’t great chances,” Arias said. “But out of those 29 shots came about 15 real good chances to score.

“When you get that many chances, you need to score, and we did.”

The ’Canes scored their first goal at the 33:01 mark, when Shannon Grady cleaned up a shot from Lauren Grady that deflected off Barrier.

At the 27:35 mark, Indians forward Alexa Torman evened the score at 1 with a shot that got under the legs of ’Canes goalkeeper Jessica Simmons.

But Marian answered back less than two minutes later with a goal from Lefevour, who weaved past four Indians and fired a shot to the far post.

“We knew they had some fast girls and we tried marking them tight,” Marengo coach Brandon Holton said. “They were still getting away from us and that definitely hurt us.”

“On offense, we couldn’t transition from the backfield to the front. We couldn’t get enough shots off because we were having trouble of easy touches and passes.”

Holton said Marengo (10-10-1) got off 25 shots in its game against Burlington Central on Monday, so it was a surprise to see the offense struggle against Marian. The Indians had only one shot the entire second half.

Marengo was looking forward to a possibility of facing Hampshire for the third time this season, but the two schools will have to wait until next year.

“We put it all on the field,” Marengo senior Hayley Keil said. “Definitely for the seniors on the team, I felt like there was some uncertainty early on in the game because we knew it could be the last time we played together.

“It may have inhibited our play, but Marian is a great team. We were a little shaky and it’s definitely a little disappointing to end it this way. We had a great season, though.”