The Ankeny girls’ soccer team had to wait more than a week to get back on the field after suffering its first loss of the season.
The eighth-ranked Hawkettes returned to action on Tuesday and used a dominant second half to post a 4-0 victory at Southeast Polk. They scored all four of their goals in the final 40 minutes to hand the Rams their third straight defeat.
“Southeast Polk has a really unique way of defending, and credit to them we couldn’t figure it out,” said Ankeny coach Simon Brown. “It took us awhile, and then when we did, we missed a couple of chances that could have made it 2-0 or 3-0 at halftime. But we had a chance to reset at the half, we gave the girls a little bit more information, and they came out with a lot of fire in the second half.”
Freshman Ava Paoli scored Ankeny’s first two goals for a brace. Camryn Dietz and Alli Macke each added another goal to complete the scoring.
Macke also had a pair of assists, while Teja Pritchard had one.
The Hawkettes were coming off a 1-0 loss at No. 7 Johnston in a shootout on April 10.
“We still haven’t conceded a goal and yet somehow we lost a game,” Brown said. “That’s just the weirdness of Iowa high school soccer where you can lose a game and not give up a goal. We just have to focus on the other end of the field and try to score more goals. That’s why we’ve been working on a lot of attacking stuff.”
Ankeny goalkeeper Jasmine Moser was credited with three saves in the win. Taevah Ganahi played the final 5 minutes and added another save.
“They had a couple of chances,” Brown said of the Rams. “They’ve got a couple of quick girls up top that you have to account for. It was not an easy game.”
The Hawkettes improved to 2-1 in the league and 5-1 overall. Southeast Polk’s records dropped to 0-3 and 5-4.
Ankeny will travel to Dowling Catholic on Thursday for another conference game against the No. 2 Maroons (2-1), who dropped a 1-0 decision at Johnston on Monday.
“It’s like everyone is beating each other (in our conference), and we kind of knew it would be like that,” Brown said. “There are probably going to be seven or eight teams from our league in the top 10 this week. It looks very similar to an SEC football kind of thing.”