'Mission' accomplished for West girls against Kennedy

IOWA CITY—Iowa City West took a big step toward a Mississippi division title Friday night with a 1-0 victory over Kennedy at Barker Field.

No. 3 West (7-1, 9-1) has only lost to No. 2 Linn-Mar and came into Friday's play with a one-game divisional lead over Hempstead and a game and a half lead over Kennedy.

The Women of Troy will be prohibitive favorites in the rest of their MVC games.

'After the Linn-Mar game we had a mission in this game,' West senior forward Anna Hausler said. 'These guys have always put up fights in past years. This is for the MVC championship, so we really wanted this one.'

Kennedy already had two losses, to Linn-Mar and Prairie, and a third realistically knocks the Cougars out of the title chase. But if Kennedy plays like it did Friday it has a lot more winning yet to do in a season that began with high hopes and can still end in Des Moines.

'We've really been thinking about how we come into games and how we approach them, and in this game we had a new standard for everything,' Kennedy senior Kaela Dickerman said. 'We had a new mentality to work hard every second of the game. I think this is our new standard for all the games in the second half of the season.'

West got the game's only goal with just 4 minutes, 31 seconds left in the first half on a Regan Steigleder chip shot off a pass from Tia Saunders.

'I have to give it up to my teammate; she played a nice ball…,' Steigleder said. 'I chipped the keeper I guess.'

West did a good job of possessing the ball throughout. The Trojans never panicked when the ball was in the back, and instead they connected with a teammate and started their own attack.

'That's something we've been working on this season, and it's something we think is our strong suit,' Hausler said. 'This game was such a high-pressure game that we just wanted to stay calm and get the job done.'

Kennedy was not without an attack. The Cougars nearly scored in the first 10 seconds of the game with a shot hitting the post.

'I think it was one of those games where they got one in and we didn't,' Kennedy senior Jordan Holmes said. 'We had more shots than they did. They got lucky. Other than that it was a good, even game.'

'As a team we were ready to play this game,' Dickerman said. 'We had the right mindset. We had to attack quickly, we had to attack hard if we were going to score and win. Although we didn't score, we still had a good attack.'

'They fought hard the whole entire game. Our defense and our mids, everyone worked hard to fend them off,' West senior midfielder Alli Peterson said.