Marshalltown girls soccer put a bow on their best regular season in more than 10 years on Monday night.
The Bobcats pushed back against some second-half pressure from Des Moines Lincoln and racking up the goals in a 7-2 romp in the girls’ final home game of the year at Leonard Cole Field.
MHS enters the postseason with a 12-5 record and will travel to Dowling Catholic (6-7) next Tuesday for a Class 3A Region 2 semifinal. It’s Marshalltown’s first 10-win season since 2013.
“There was some talking before the game, so all we knew was we wanted to come in and win this one,” Alexia Garcia said. “We did our job.”
Garcia and Sara Huffman scored two goals each for the Bobcats, and Kenya Gomez Reyes, Lilyia Christen and Stefani Gutierrez had a tally each for Marshalltown.
MHS controlled most of the first half with a 2-0 lead, but within 30 seconds of the second half Lili Cervantes scored for Lincoln.
“They were able to control more in the second half,” MHS senior Aubrie Tejada said of Lincoln. “[Cervantes] was definitely very good with her feet, very fast, props to her.”
Just when the Railsplitters appeared to be getting momentum, an illegal touch outside of the box by the goalkeeper put Huffman in prime position to fire a free kick from the top of the box and into the top left corner of the goal for a 3-1 Bobcat lead.
Lincoln immediately got an answer from Cervantes again, finding the perfect placement in the bottom left of the goal to make it a one-goal game once again 90 seconds after Huffman’s goal.
“They were able to connect in the middle of the field and get our defenders a little disorganized,” MHS head coach Stacy Galema said. “And then they had great footwork up front, a lot of speed, and once we’re disorganized it’s hard to recover.”
Once again, a self-inflicted Lincoln error, this time on a Railsplitter defender committing a handball foul, led to a proper penalty kick for Huffman, and she converted her seventh PK of the season for a 4-2 lead with just over 20 minutes to play.
That gave the Bobcats the comfort they needed, settling down as the goals rolled in to wrap up Marshalltown’s third win in a row.
“Especially when it was a little intense there in that second half, it was nice to see them go in,” Garcia said.
The Bobcats won four of their last five games in Marshalltown, including all of their last four at Leonard Cole Field.
“It’s definitely a morale booster for us to see our parents and friends come out to support us,” said senior captain Aubrie Tejada. “When we were younger, we were only winning one or two games a season, so it means a lot to us seniors.”
Galema credits an offense with more variety and more patience as some of the keys to the Bobcats’ success this year.
“We always struggled to find more ways than one to score in previous years, and we’ve realized that we don’t have to rush it, we can just stay composed, hold on to the ball, find our opportunities,” Galema said. “And our defense is just really organized, and Sara and Aubrie have helped tremendously. Aubrie will step up to a ball while Sara cleans up everything behind and they just do a great job of working together; from the beginning of the season they just kind of had an understanding of how they wanted to play, and how our team was able to play.”
Dowling awaits in Tuesday’s regional opener, with a deceptive under-.500 record – all of the Maroons’ losses have come to teams in the Class 3A rankings.
“Being in the CIML, they’re facing some of the best,” Galema said. “They’re going to be more of a possession-oriented team than we’ve faced in a while here, so we just have to keep them in front of us, and when we have possession, we have to value it and hopefully create some of those dangerous opportunities we saw today.”
