Oct. 6—The Logansport girls soccer team gave Harrison a good battle Thursday night at the Class 3A Harrison Sectional.
With the season on the line the Berries played the Raiders to within 2-0.
It was a much-improved showing from the regular-season matchup from three weeks earlier, when Harrison won 9-0 in a game that ended early by mercy rule.
“One of the things I think we’ve always done pretty well is we tend to get better as the season goes on which is what you want,” Logansport coach Todd Reiff said. “Neil [Muller] and I, we sat down when we saw who we drew in the sectional and we said we have to do something different. We changed our formation to give us more strength in the midfield. We went to a 4-5-1. Our defense was fine, our goalkeeper was fabulous, but our midfield was just struggling. By putting five people there that made that a lot stronger. It still gave us some runs. We had some opportunities, we just were about a half a step away from making some big things happen.”
The Berries (7-10) kept the high-scoring Raiders (12-3-3) in check for most of the night.
“Our goalkeeper Natalee Packard played an amazing game, some amazing saves,” Reiff said. “Our defense I thought did really well. Haleigh Brock, our senior, really anchored our defense. She’s super aggressive, she’s super fast. Kellyn Cripe in the middle on defense and Vanessa Santos Toloza just played an amazing game as an outside defender. Nobody did anything coming down her side at all. Gabby Martin played a great game on the outside especially as a freshman.
“In our midfield we really were anchored by Isabel Padilla. We put her in a position generally we had to put our strongest person in that middle of the field and Izzy did a great job of keeping their No. 1 scorer from getting free. Gracie Henderson got into that midfield action as an outside mid, Giselle Ruiz, Kiaranely Tomas and Magdalena Mateo Felipe played in the center mid as well as Danielle Dubon did a nice job. We moved players around and Ashanta Curry we put up to striker and we tried to put her there just harassing their back line.
“I thought the girls did really well. I think when you play a game like you did during the season, get pretty well beat up and then can come back and play a pretty respectable game, 2-0, I think that says a lot about their effort. Their effort was tremendous tonight. We were just a half step away from making some bigger things happen.”
The Berries put together a strong first half and trailed just 1-0 at the break. The Raiders added a second goal early in the second half.
“They were up 1-0 and they were not happy. I just knew they were going to come out ferocious the first five minutes and I told the girls you’ve got to be prepared for it,” Reiff said. “They got a throw-in deep in their territory and we just weren’t ready. Quite frankly we did not get ready as quick as we should have for that throw-in. They made a connection, the girl turned and ripped a shot. We just weren’t as focused as we should have been for the first 30 seconds of the second half. Then the rest of the game we didn’t let them score.
“They’re a quality team. They’re as high of a quality team in this area as there is. I was real proud of the girls for the effort they gave. We were about half a step away from making some bigger things happen.”
The Berries were led by their senior class this year, which includes leading scorer Padilla, who scored around 20 goals this season and 50 for her career.
“Great kids,” Reiff said. “It’s a great group of kids to work with. You never want to go out with a loss but the thing I loved tonight was the effort was just tremendous tonight.”
