FORTVILLE — Speed proved to be the difference, the speed in putting halftime changes into play.
After a scoreless first half, Mt. Vernon’s girls soccer team scored two early second-half goals on the way to a 4-0 Hoosier Heritage Conference win against Hancock County rival Greenfield-Central at Mt. Vernon High School Monday.
It was the Marauders 17th straight HHC win and 48th in the last 50 league matches. Their last conference loss came on Sept. 12, 2020 against Yorktown.
“We talked very specifically about some things and they very quickly figured it out and capitalized on it,” Mt. Vernon head coach Aaron Britt said. “As a coach, that’s a big thing.
“There were no big adjustments, just some small corrections. We were doing a great job of finding (forward) Mattie Isger very consistently. It was what everybody else was doing off of it that was our main focus. It wasn’t real cohesive in the first half. We generated a couple of really good opportunities, but (Greenfield-Central goalkeeper Jessica Merritt) made some big saves. It was more fine-tuning everybody off the ball.”
Four minutes into the second half, a cross from Kylie Brandes to Isger was missed, but Aya Renforth was there to back it up. She found the back of the net for a 1-0 lead.
Less than three minutes later, at the 33:34 mark, Brandes found Renforth again for a 2-0 advantage. Brandes, at 8:33, and Esther Isger, with :47.2 left, added late goals for the final tallies.
It was the second straight year Merritt had been a thorn in the Marauders side. A year ago, she had 18 saves, including a stop on a Mattie Isger first half PK, in a game eventually won by Mt. Vernon, 2-1, on a Brandes PK.
She had save-after-save in the first half, including three on Mattie Isger and a pair on Brandes. Even though the Marauders had four find the back of the net, Merritt had 11 second-half saves and 19 on the night.
“I knew she’d play well, and she did,” Britt said of the G-C goalie. “To her credit, she also made a lot of big saves in the second half. The couple that we put in were just, we scored some great goals tonight.”
“Jess is an all-conference keeper for a reason,” Greenfield-Central coach Brandon Steeno said. “She is amazing. Four goals going in the net doesn’t do the job she did tonight justice. Those four goals are going to go on her sheet, but she made some amazing saves.
“Three of their four goals were on backside runs. We just didn’t stay with the runner. That’s one thing that games like this do, they show you what you have to work on. We will work on that as we head into Yorktown Wednesday and Pendleton Heights next week.”
The two goals for Renforth give her three on the season. She also had one in Saturday’s 5-0 win over Franklin. It was also the third goals of the season for both Brandes and Esther Isger, a freshman who has had one goal in each of the last three games.
“(Britt) made some good adjustments in the middle of the field that got them just a little bit more space. He made some adjustments with his center-mid that got him a little bit more space and they were able to exploit us a little bit,” Steeno said.
Mt. Vernon improved to 3-1 overall and 1-0 in the HHC. Greenfield-Central is 0-3 and 0-1.
“Our girls stuck with it and persevered,” Britt said. “(They did) all the things you want out of a team, stuck to the game plan and what we wanted to do and they did not get frustrated. They continued to press, and at some point you have to trust it is going to work.”
Mt. Vernon travels to Class 3A No. 5 Homestead Saturday.
