Serving Lincoln County for more than a century!
Serving Lincoln County for more than a century!
Gorillas top seed in league playoffs
Davenport junior Kiera Katz pursues the ball down the near sideline in the Gorillas' 2-1 win over Northwest Christian Tuesday, Oct. 24.
DAVENPORT - A regular season NE2B title and homefield advantage through the league playoffs were on the line when undefeated, 13-0-1 Northwest Christian visited 12-1 Davenport. And the Gorillas secured both prizes, coming out with a 2-1 victory to give the Crusaders their first loss of the season Tuesday, Oct. 24.
Davenport will host both games it plays in the league playoffs this week. The win over NWC was the Gorillas' eighth in a row.
The Crusaders proved they wouldn't roll over and hand Davenport a victory early on when Clare Wichman dribbled a quick shot past Davenport goalkeeper Addie Schneider's outstretched arms into the back of the net five minutes into the game.
But Schneider was perfect from there, notching several saves over the next 75 minutes including a critical free kick stop with two minutes left to prevent NWC from a tie.
"I knew that our offense was going to spark a fire and we have a great group of girls," Schneider said. "We don't let things like that get to our heads."
Davenport's offense found the net 10 minutes after Wichman's goal when Glenna Soliday sped past the defense and got a hard shot to deflect off the NWC keeper's arms into the net.
The two teams played even for 18 minutes after that before Charlotte Soliday drilled a shot off a corner from Jensyn Jacobsen to give the Gorillas a 2-1 lead with 7:26 left in the first half.
That was all the scoring, as both teams missed chances to find the net in the second half.
Davenport will be the top seed in the District 7 1B/2B playoffs and will host Reardan in the first round at 4 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 26.
"If...we can get good passing, we'll be tough to beat," Davenport head coach Monty Soliday said.
The winner of that game will advance to the league championship Tuesday, Oct. 31, while the loser will head to a loser-out game.
Drew Lawson is the editor of the Davenport Times. He is a graduate of Eastern Washington University.
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