Panthers Aiming To Take Next Step
PLYMOUTH – There will be a lot of familiarity in the Class 2-A girls soccer regional at Plymouth.
NorthWood and Culver Academy will renew acquaintances in the morning game of the Plymouth Girls Soccer Regional, a 10 a.m. kickoff this Saturday. The two teams know each other well, having played on Sept. 22 with the Academy handing NorthWood its worst loss of the season, 5-1.
The Panthers, however, have pitched three straight shutouts heading into this weekend, including both of its sectional wins over West Noble and DeKalb, and are looking to win its first-ever regional game after making the regional round for the first time last season.
“Our defense played great on Saturday,” said NorthWood head coach Phil Ummel. “Our goalkeeper, Kira Robinson, and defenders, Mackenzie Bergman, Neely Trenshaw and Caitlin Lower, have been tremendous for us all year and continued their solid play posting two shutouts last week. As a team that has struggled to score goals at times this year, the margin of error for our defense has been quite small. Fortunately, they’ve been up for the challenge the vast majority of the time.”
NorthWood (9-6-3) does have plenty of experience against high pressure situations, having played eight ranked teams on its schedule and itself coming into the regional ranked No. 19 and the Academy checking in at No. 13. NorthWood played Northridge, Warsaw and South Bend St. Joe all to 1-0 results, St. Joe (13-5-2) a possible regional finals opponent as the Indians will take on Griffith (7-7-2) in the Plymouth regional’s second contest.
As Ummel stated, its defense is the bread and butter with the Panthers. NorthWood has pitched nine shutouts this season, Robinson in charge of all of them, and other than the Academy, only John Glenn and Goshen scored more than one goal on them, both netting two goals.
Morgan Stickley leads the Panthers with eight goals and midfielders Avery Bontrager and Emma Martz have 11 goals and 14 assists between them. Winger Kali Parisi has connected on three goals and six assists, but has tremendous speed on the outside to stretch defenses, allowing Martz and Stickley better looks.
Culver Academy relies heavily on the leg of Heather Macnab, who leads the team with 33 goals and seven assists. Sophie Rotiroti has potted 12 goals to give the Academy a solid one-two punch.
“The girls will be looking forward to having another chance against Culver Academy on Saturday,” Ummel said. “We didn’t feel like we played our best game the first time, but they had a lot to do with that. Culver is a very talented team. That being said, we will spend the majority of this week focused on ourselves. We need to make sure that we are prepared to come out both physically and mentally ready to play our best soccer this weekend. If we can do that, we’ll let everything else figure itself out. We will focus on what we can control.”