Ankeny High School Activities Director Mike Bakker waited out Tuesday’s severe storms, much to the delight of Ankeny girls’ soccer coach Simon Brown.
While most of the Class 3A regional games were postponed due to the weather, the third-ranked Hawkettes were able to complete their semifinal contest against visiting Ames after delaying the start for 30 minutes at Northview.
“I saw 11 of the 16 3A games cancelled, and we played,” said Brown, whose team rolled to a 3-0 victory. “We’ve just given ourselves a massive advantage because we have an extra day of rest. We can go watch Dowling Catholic play (on Wednesday). We just rolled the dice on playing. We looked at the radar. Ames wanted to play, and we wanted to play. Shoutout to Mike Bakker for just waiting it out. The storm was bad, but we delayed the start.”
Emma Gott and Alli Macke each scored a goal and also had an assist as Ankeny improved its record to 12-4. The Little Cyclones finished with a 10-8 record.
“I think I speak for the team when I say we all wanted to play this game tonight,” said Gott, who had a hat trick in the Hawkettes’ 4-0 win over Ames on March 30. “The conditions definitely weren’t the greatest, but it gives us the advantage of an extra day to rest and recover that our opponents won’t have. Even talking to some players from other teams, they were saying they wanted to play tonight as well so I’m really happy that our team was able to do so.”
Ankeny will host the regional final on Thursday at 7 p.m. at Northview. The Hawkettes will play the winner of Wednesday’s game between Dowling (6-9) and Marshalltown (12-5).
Ankeny needed less than 2 minutes to get on the board in Tuesday’s game. Sydney Van Houweling found the net off a throw-in pass from Gott.
The Hawkettes added to their lead midway through the first half off a corner kick by Sophia Kephart. Macke then headed the ball to Gott, who tapped it into the net for her 11th goal of the season.
Macke later blasted a rocket from the right side that deflected off the left post for a goal in the 61st minute. It was her team-leading 14th goal of the year.
“I was happy with the way we started,” Brown said. “We scored right away and got all the nerves out. We moved things around and went a little heavy with the offense to try to score some goals. We scored off a corner, and Macke scored on a cracker. We’re still not scoring enough scrappy goals.”
Ankeny played without senior defender Liz Proctor, who is nursing a minor injury. She is expected to play on Thursday.
“Liz went down against Urbandale (on May 7),” Brown said. “We just rested her. She’s a senior and wants to play at state. Hopefully, we can get her there.”