GRANITE CITY – It had been five years since the last time the Edwardsville Tigers and Granite City Warriors girls soccer teams played one another.
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Now, they could meet again in 11 days.
The meeting between the two became rarer when Granite City left the Southwestern Conference. The two were scheduled to play one another but instead the game was rained out, making Monday night’s contest an interesting one.
The Tigers, who earned the No. 2 seed in their Pekin Sub-Sectional, only behind No. 1-seeded O’Fallon, beat the Warriors Monday night by a narrow margin of 1-0.
The lone goal came from Ellie Neath with 1:26 left in the game. Both teams tried to play a more possession-based game, but toward the end of the 80 minutes things became a little more frantic with both teams searching for the breakthrough.
It came for Edwardsville when Neath took a pass around the 18 yard box, touched around a defender and put it left-side netting for the 1-0 lead.
It was her sixth goal this season. Kylie Peel currently leads the team with seven goals while Metro-East Lutheran transfer Kate Jose also has six and Maggie Young has five.
As mentioned, the Warriors and Tigers could meet again relatively soon for a regional championship.
The Tigers take on No. 8 seeded Alton (3-16) in the regional semis at Public School Stadium in Alton on Tuesday, May 14 at 4:30 p.m. The No. 3 seeded Warriors (9-5-3) take on No. 6 seeded Quincy (12-4-1) in the night game at 6:30 p.m.
The Tigers host Alton tonight, Tuesday, May 7 at 6:30 p.m. Edwardsville won the meeting earlier this season 10-0. Granite lost to the Blue Devils in last year’s regional semifinal 2-1 after penalty kicks.
The Alton Regional final will take place on Saturday, May 18 at 3 p.m.
“I think we can beat anybody if we come and play like we need to,” Granite City head coach Kenny Prazma said following Monday night’s loss.
“We just got to work a little bit harder. A lot of times when we’re playing teams like Edwardsville who have a lot of depth, when they make a sub, not a whole lot changes. But, when we’re playing teams like that, you’ve got to just work a little bit harder, you’ve got to find your marks, and keep them from having that much possession of the ball. If you give them that much possession, at some point in time that’s going to happen,” Prazma said regarding the game’s lone goal.
Edwardsville played a much similar game to this one back on April 15 against O’Fallon. The game was tied 0-0 for the majority until the Panthers scored with 1:20 left on the clock.
In that game, the Tigers threw caution to the wind trying to get the goal and prevent overtime, but it backfired when O’Fallon struck on a furious counterattack.
Monday night against Granite, that was not the case. This one ended up going the Tigers’ way because of some changes. Some of them were personal changes, others in the team’s formation or shape, but they worked.
“At some point you need to score,” Edwardsville head coach Abby Federmann said. “Their threat was their two really fast girls up top (Madison Vasiloff and Savanhna Khammanyvong), so we played pretty conservative because we didn’t want to get scored on. But at some point, we’ve got to make the changes to score. And I think I have a little more confidence now in my bench knowing that maybe we could do that earlier and score earlier.”
It’s an Edwardsville team that is pretty banged up at the moment and without four of its starters, but the Tigers believe in momentum and want to head toward the postseason on a roll.
“Ultimately in your mind, you can say this [game] doesn’t matter, seeding is out, we need to stay healthy, we need to get everybody to the end, but winning heading toward the postseason is what we want to do,” Federmann said.
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