EHS ends regular season on two-game winning streak
Perhaps lost in the headlines about the Emporia High soccer team’s struggles to score is the fact that sometimes, EHS’ defense is good enough that one goal is all the Spartans need.
That was the case in Thursday’s regular-season finale against Topeka High at TRYSA, and Emporia got the lone goal it needed — even if the Spartans came away feeling as if they should have had more.
Emily Burris’ score in the game’s 48th minute off a long lead pass from Ashley Leihsing gave the Spartans a 1-0 win, their second straight victory to close out the regular season. However, EHS (7-8-1) didn’t play at its sharpest — and coach John Decker let them hear about that a little after the game.
“The goal we had was an excellent goal,” Decker said. “It was just nothing more than finally we decided that we wanted to score. And she ran through people, and by people, and laid herself out to get that goal, and that’s what we like to see. But we need to do that over and over and over again.”
Leihsing dropped in a well-struck pass ahead of Burris from the left side of the field to the right side of the box, and Burris charged ahead of the defense. Topeka High goalkeeper Emily Soza came out to to the right side to challenge Burris, who grounded the shot past her and inside the opposite post.
EHS had blown a couple of good first-half scoring opportunities against the Trojans (3-11-1), and Burris admitted that before her goal, there was a feeling as though this might be another game in which the Spartans would never get on the board.
“It kind of felt like that at the beginning,” she said, “because we weren’t really winning balls in the middle, or working it to the outside. But we were getting into the corner and trying to slot it to the middle, and it was working for us a little bit.
“But in that second half, we came out ready to play, and we were on top of it.”
In launching 22 shots to Topeka High’s five, and 10 shots on goal to the Trojans’ three, EHS controlled the ball for most of the game, as the Spartan defense simply didn’t let Topeka High set itself up for many good scoring chances. The closest may have come with 4:26 left in the first half, when Spartan goalie Melanie Nuessen guarded the left post and caught a left-footed line drive shot from about 12 feet out.
Decker didn’t like how the Spartans protected their lead in the final minutes, stressing possession over trying to get another goal. But EHS’ offense acted nicely as its defense in the final minute, when Jordan Sosa tried to score off a Joslyn Barton cross but booted it well over the goal with about 55 seconds to go. Valuable seconds ticked away before play resumed, and Topeka High didn’t get the ball out of its own end of the field again.
“It wasn’t our best game by any means,” Decker said. “Should’ve won the game by many more goals. It was one of those nights, I guess we played well enough to win, and that’s about it.”
Emporia will find out its Central Kansas regional pairing at the coaches’ seeding meeting on Saturday morning. The other teams in the Central Kansas regional are McPherson, McPherson-Elyria Christian, Newton, Ottawa, Salina Central, Salina South, Shawnee Heights, Hayden, Highland Park, Seaman and Topeka West.