Ottawa rolls to 7-0 I-8 victory over L-P

OTTAWA — The Ottawa girls soccer team scored in the opening three minutes of Wednesday’s Interstate 8 Conference match against rival La Salle-Peru at King Field.

The host Pirates then added three more goals before halftime before finding the back of the net a trio of times in the second half to post a 7-0 win over the Cavaliers.

Ottawa improved to 5-8 overall and 3-5 in league play this season, while L-P fell to 0-14 and 0-8.

“Across the field I was very happy with how we controlled the ball,” said Ottawa coach Kevin Olesen, his squad holding a 27-2 shot advantage, including 19-0 on target. “We are still working on being better at attacking open space and looking for opportunities up the sidelines, but I thought we executed a lot of the things we’ve been working on and talking about recently.

“Our touch was good, our ball distribution was good and a lot of the girls were in on the attack in the offensive third. We looked like a very versatile team today and that’s what I’m looking for. I thought we played a very solid match from start to finish.”

Ottawa’s Chloe Carmona opened the scoring 2 minutes, 37 seconds in on a short chip past Cavs keeper Lily Higgins (eight saves) off a pass from Ayla Covalsky.

Georgia Kirkpatrick (24:51) and Jasmine Resendez (16:24) then added unassisted goals before Covalsky scored with just under 12 minutes remaining in the half on a rebound of an initial shot by Carmona that Higgins made a tremendous diving save on.

Covalsky scored off a pass from Kindley Moore 105 seconds into the second half, and five minutes later Carmona scored again, this time off a pass from Kalie Andersen.

Defender Taylor Brandt closed out the scoring with 26 minutes remaining with a 25-yard shot that deflected off of Higgins hand and into the net.

“Our offense is really starting to develop,” Brandt said. “We’re making quick, accurate passes, moving into open spaces and creating opportunities to score and then finishing those chances.

“I knew coming into the season that we’d be a pretty good team in the midfield and defense, but our offense has really gotten better as the season has gone along. Today as defenders we were able to push up a little further than normal, which allowed me to get a couple chances at the net and fortunately I was able to put one in.”

La Salle-Peru’s best chance of the match came 10 minutes into the second half, but a hard shot from 20 yards out on the leftwing by Vicky Tejada sailed over the outstretched arms of Ottawa keeper Shaelyn Miller but deflected off the crossbar.

“We’ve struggled offensively this season with only scoring a handful of goals and struggled defensively keeping our opponents from scoring,“ L-P coach Christin Pappas said. ”We have a young team, so while we’ve taken some lumps this season, I’m seeing glimpses of what kind of team we can be in the future.

“These girls are still hungry and want to be here playing. It’s been a tough season, but none of them has given up or quit trying. Today we were able to create a couple of pretty good chances, but we just weren’t able to string enough of those together.”

Both squads are back in action on Thursday as Ottawa is on the road against DePue-Hall, while L-P hosts Princeton.