Wendt free kick fuels Spartans win
It’s for times such as the one presented Thursday afternoon that Pleasant Valley senior Katy Wendt puts in extra practice time on the soccer pitch.
“Me and a couple of the other girls stay after almost every day,” Wendt said. “We work on set pieces, both direct and indirect (kicks).”
Wendt blasted home a free kick in the match’s 11th minute — approximately — to open the scoring between the Spartans and Bettendorf, and PV wound up holding off a late Bulldogs flurry for a 2-1 Mississippi Athletic Conference road victory.
“When I got fouled just outside the box, the first thought was, automatically, to shoot it (rather than set up a teammate),” Wendt said of the free kick, which successfully went right of a slew of Bettendorf defenders and got past Bulldogs keeper Jessie VanDyke.
“The wall lined up on the left (side of the net) and the keeper tried to protect the backside.”
PV (6-1) stayed perfect in the MAC with Thursday’s win; only a loss to Chicago suburban side Mt. Prospect, sustained in the title game at Saturday’s State Line Challenge in Moline, has been a blemish on the Spartans’ season.
“The girls felt like they learned a lot from the loss, and I guess that’s a good thing,” PV coach Cathy Allbaugh said. “This game is going to be a good game, just like when the boys played. That’s just how it is. I think we outplayed them, but they played very well.”
The Spartans made it 2-0 just before halfway through the second half on a pretty feed from junior midfielder Anna Aquino to sophomore Emily Prais. Before that goal, it had been pretty much all PV on offense. Both Wendt and Aquino were in the midfield with the availability of striker Jordan Shoemaker, and the combination was very effective.
“Me and Anna are very comfortable together. We even played ODP (a U.S. Olympic youth developmental program) when we were little kids, so we have a long history of playing off of each other,” Wendt said of the addition of Aquino to the Spartans midfield.
But the Bulldogs (3-7, 2-2 MAC), who’d already started to ratchet up their intensity even before that PV insurance goal, got it back when a cross from Ashlee Venema was pinned against the side bar briefly by PV keeper Allison Fullenkamp. A moment later, Bettendorf’s Ashley Gabelmann wedged it free and past Fullenkamp for the lone Bulldogs goal.
“It’s been a terrific week for us. We’re a very young team. We started nine freshmen and sophomores, and the first half we had kind of a makeshift lineup,” Bettendorf coach Todd Hornaday said. “In the second half, we were back to our normal routine. I thought we gave up a bad goal (to Prais); we’d been knocking on the door and that slowed us down.”