EDWARDSVILLE – Edwardsville's field hockey team stayed with a Villa Duchesne team that's one of the St. Louis area's top teams in a Monday afternoon home match at Tiger Stadium.
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The Saints got two goals from Taryn Tkachuk – the daughter of former St. Louis Blues and NHL standout Keith Tkachuk – as Villa defeated the Tigers 4-1 to drop EHS to 6-6-2 on the season; the Saints went to 15-2 on the year with the win.
Tiger coach Jaimee Phegley thought, despite the loss, that her team could find positives to build on for the stretch run. “We're going into playing Nerinx (Hall of Webster Groves, Mo.) on Wednesday and we know that our schedule from here on out is not going to be easy,” Phegley said. “We're kind of past those games where we're going to get six or seven goals – there's not going to be that deficit again, so we're going to to understand that as we go through this week.”
Phegley said the Saints were a strong team. “They, as a team, played really well,” Phegley said. “We expected that; this is the first time that we've seen them play this year.”
Despite the loss, Phegley was pleased with the Tigers' performance on the day. “I wish we would have kept it a little closer,” Phegley said. “I would have been happy with that 2-1; it would have been nice to keep, but it was an overall positive performance on our girls' part.
“I wish a couple of those (Saint goals) wouldn't had went by, but I think that was more of an emotional issue on our girls being frantic when they didn't need to be; we need to talk about speed of play compared to rush of play.”
Tkachuk got the scoring started at 10:58 when her shot beat Tiger goaltender Sarah Blume; nearly five minutes later, Sophia Swalley scored when, off a short-corner restart, the ball came to her from a pair of passes; all she had to do was tap it into the net past Saint goaltender Emma Deines to tie the game.
Right before the half, however, Brooke Behan found the ball and scored past Blume to put Villa ahead 2-1. Not long after the second half began, Edwardsville seemingly had tied the game on a drive by Alanna Kaminsky, but a high-stick decision by the umpires called the goal back. “I think that goal being called back kind of downplayed their spirits a little bit,” Phegley said. “I agreed with it being called back; it was a great hard hit – Alanna Kaminsky is an awesome hitter – but her stick was just too high.”
Edwardsville still managed to keep the game within reach before Tkachuk getting her second goal of the game at 50:36 for a 3-1 Villa lead, with Liz Pelligreen putting the game away about three minutes later.
EHS hosts Nerinx Hall's Markers at 4:15 p.m. Wednesday, then hosts St. John School of Houston at 2 p.m. Saturday, the first of two games St. John will play on the day; they will meet Cor Jesu following their game against the Tigers in Edwardsville.
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