WOOD RIVER – East Alton-Wood River's girls soccer team has a mix of youth and experience this season.
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Despite that, the Oilers are still a work in progress, feels coach Matt Herndon. Some of that inexperience showed on the field in EAWR's opening match of the Oiler Soccer Classic tournament Monday afternoon at Wood River Soccer Park as Mascoutah scored a 5-0 win over the Oilers.
“We're working on it,” Herndon said. “We're improving; we're just working on the small things right now, trying to improve game by game. We're (a) fairly young (team), but I've got a group of seniors that have been there with me the whole time. After that, the rest of the team is super young.
“They're playing hard, they're doing the thing I ask and we're learning as we go right now with our mistakes. We'll get there at some point, it's just a matter of putting all the pieces together.”
Mascoutah broke on top first in the 20th minute when Annabelle Walsh found an opening in a goal-mouth scramble and tucked the ball into the back of the net to give the Indians a 1-0 lead; Mascoutah extended the lead in the 33rd minute when Kassidy Cusic played a rebound off Oiler goalkeeper Becca Richards after an initial shot and scored for a 2-0 Indian lead at the halftime break.
Mascoutah's next two goals came from the combination of Allison Goodspeed and Tehya Wise, Goodspeed scoring the goals in the 53rd and 70th minutes to put Mascoutah up 4-0 in the closing stages of the match. Molly Cravens got the Indians' final goal of the match off a head ball from a corner kick delivered to her by Emily Smith in the 73rd minute.
The Oilers did have a couple of good chances to get on the scoresheet in the second half, but both of them just failed to click.
The Oilers' effort throughout the match pleased Herndon. “Mascoutah's a good ball club,” Herndon said. “I thought we played really well with them in the first half; we just made some minor mistakes. It got out of hand in the second half on us, but that's the nature of the beast sometimes.”
The tournament is set to continue Tuesday, with the Oilers meeting backyard rival Roxana at 6 p.m. Tuesday while Jersey takes on Mascoutah at 4 p.m. The tournament, a four-team, round-robin affair, runs through Thursday evening.
