NEW PALESTINE — Wednesday night’s meeting between Mt. Vernon and New Palestine was a county rivalry, a matchup of two teams atop the Hoosier Heritage Conference standings, and a game with the HHC traveling trophy on the line.
For Mt. Vernon, it was a chance to exact revenge for last season’s result.
Just over a year ago, Mt. Vernon’s 19-match HHC winning streak was snapped by New Palestine 1-0 on a late double-overtime goal on the Marauders home pitch.
Since that loss, the Marauders have started a new streak.
A dominant 6-0 win over the Dragons at New Palestine High School on Wednesday was their seventh straight conference win.
“We’re in the conference battle every year, and that’s what we’re always pushing for. Last year, New Palestine had a great performance, and it went their way. The girls were really focused tonight because most of them were a part of that last year. This is what we were waiting for, but this is only midway through the conference season, so we have to keep up that intensity,” Mt. Vernon head coach Aaron Britt said.
“That’s the type of game that we wanted. We didn’t know that it would be 6-0, but we knew that we have a dangerous attack and have been playing some really tough competition the past couple of weeks. We’ve been scratching, clawing, and just finding ways to get results against really good teams. We do that for this reason when we get into these games that matter towards conference.”
While last year’s meeting took all 80 minutes of regulation and nearly all 14 minutes of overtime to decide the winner, this year’s contest was all but over after the first 40 minutes.
A pair of goals in the final five minutes of the opening half doubled the Mt. Vernon lead and made things 4-0.
At the 4:50 mark, Kat Simmons broke free one-on-one against New Palestine goalkeeper McKenzie Hacker and beat her to the left for the third Dragons goal, and two minutes later, Taylor Bastin beat the New Palestine defense to cap off the dominant half.
“The girls got after it. We talked about being disciplined and working with that same intensity that we’ve had to put into those other games from the start,” Britt said. “We couldn’t have asked for a better effort from the girls.”
While those goals came late, the scoring started early for Mt. Vernon off the foot of Kylie Brandes.
The team leader in both goals and assists added to her total in both categories on the Marauders first two goals of the night.
Seven minutes into the game, Brandes’ speed down the left side forced a corner kick and after her first attempt was deflected out, the second effort from the opposite corner found the foot of Olivia Masterson for the 1-0 lead.
Later in the half, Brandes added to her point total with a goal.
On a free kick from the right side of the box, her kick found the top of the left post and fell into the back of the net.
“We’ve scored on a lot of corners this year,” Britt said. “It’s something that we practice and press for and we were able to score on a few of them tonight.”
On the night, Brandes scored her eighth goal of the season and picked up three assists to push her total in that category to 11.
Her goal and two of her assists came on an area of the game the Dragons were trying to limit — set pieces.
“We had a gameplan and we let them score four times on set pieces. The biggest thing was to not give them set pieces and we just didn’t play that way,” New Palestine head coach Erin Clark said. “That’s all we talked about all week, and we just didn’t do it.”
Mt. Vernon tacked on a pair of second-half goals.
The first was scored by Reagan Britt off a Brandes corner, and Jaicee Cole scored the second after some miscues by the New Palestine defense left the net wide open.
“We haven’t had a lot of competition yet this year and we’ve had a lot of lopsided games. We just didn’t show up to play,” Clark said. “It’s hard to find them right now, but I hope we can take some positives away from this. We hope to learn from this and hope that we don’t repeat it. Sometimes you need a game like this to kick you in the right gear and in the right direction.”
After having limited scoring chances in the first half, the Dragons attack had opportunities after the break.
Nevaeh Gebhart had the best chance just over 10 minutes into the half, but the shot was corralled by Mt. Vernon goalkeeper Ava Stephenson.
Five New Palestine shots went on target in the half, but each time Stephenson was there to turn the Dragons away.
“The second half we were able to get some pressure, but when you’re already down four or five it’s tough to come back from, especially against a team like that,” Clark said.
Mt. Vernon hosts Yorktown at 12:30 p.m. on Saturday and New Palestine travels to Center Grove on Monday.
