Ripon Tiger girls’ soccer team unable to generate offense in loss to Waupun; defeats Mayville 4-1 | Sports

The Ripon High School Tiger girls’ soccer team wasn’t able to muster any offense as it struggled with the wind and grass playing surface in a 1-0 road loss to the Waupun Warriors last week Thursday.

With the loss, the Tigers finish the conference season 0-6-0. They are 9-0-1 in non-conference action. Two of the six conference losses came in 1-0 defeats, while they also had a 2-0 loss and a pair of 3-0 losses.

“It was a crazy, windy day and grass always does seem to be our nemesis,” Ripon head coach Steve Nankervis said. “It looks like it just kind of drained the energy out of the team. We had some good transitions into their half of the field and into their defensive third, but we weren’t able to get any shots off. We had a couple through balls where their keeper came out to pick up before we could get on them, but nothing overly exciting offensively for us.”

Waupun’s one goal came just after the ninth minute, when it played a cross into the box that was deflected into the air and the Tigers were unable to clear. A Waupun player picked the ball up just inside the box and was able to beat goalkeeper Hailee Scheier far post.

“Good goal, good shot from them; just not the best defensive effort of getting that ball cleared initially on the cross,” Nankervis said, adding Ripon was sound defensively outside of that goal and gave up just five other shots.

Overall, the Ripon coach noted it was just “a disappointing game in the sense that was our last conference game, the last chance to actually possibly get a win in the conference, but we just came up short with that one-goal loss.”

He added “it wasn’t a lack of effort by no means” and that he thought Ellerie Rost had a good game, as well as Ataly Hatfield, Sheridan Zimmerman and Ari Brooks on the back line. The Tigers suffered a couple of minor injuries that caused Nankervis to pull players out of the game and switch the lineup around, which didn’t help.

Tigers rally for 4-1 win over Mayville

Ripon fell behind the Mayville Cardinals a little before the quarter-way point of the game last week Tuesday, but didn’t panic and was able to come away with a 4-1 non-conference home win last week Tuesday.

“It was a complete game for us, from whistle to whistle,” Nankervis said. “We went down 20 minutes in, but the girls fought back, got that goal back plus three more. They closed the game out properly, both offensively and defensively.”

Mayville scored its first goal in the 20th minute on a corner kick, which was set up after Scheier was able to push a penalty kick over the top bar of the goal following what Nankervis described as “a silly foul in the box.” Nankervis noted Mayville played a “good ball in the box” on the corner kick and that Mayville’s goal scorer just ran through it.

“We just lost track of one of the runners and … she just basically bodied the ball in the goal,” the Ripon coach said.

The Tigers didn’t hang their heads, however, and got that goal back not even two minutes later when Allison Edinger took a shot from about 25 yards out and beat the Mayville goalkeeper high to the far post for her first varsity goal.

According to Nankervis, the goal got Ripon “reenergized there a little bit.” It then found the back of the net again around the 33rd minute on what he described as “some beautiful passing and play starting with Maleigha Kovalaske.”

“She made a nice pass to Summer [Anadell], who then in turn gave it right back to Maleigha and then Maleigha played the ball back across the goal mouth where Karsyn Bauman was running on to it to finish it,” he said.

Ripon went into halftime leading 2-1 and the added two more goals in the second half — both of which were scored by Anadell. The first came on a penalty kick in the 54th minute and the second was off a free kick from about 25 yards out that the junior was able to beat the goalkeeper high and to the far part.

The goals from Anadell, which were her fourth and fifth of the season, were a welcome sight for Nankervis and the Tigers after Anadell missed four games due to an injury. Anadell was in her third game back from the injury.

“To get her scoring again is nice because she is one of our good scoring options. She was kind of quiet to start the year and then went down with an injury,” Nankervis said. “… To get her back definitely helps our confidence.”

The Ripon head coach added that Mayville was a decent team that was “very comparable to us” and that it was “a good effort by everyone.” Mayville finished with five shots on goal, four of which Scheier saved. Nankervis noted that corner kicks attempted in the game were even and that the Tigers were “a little bit better” in terms of possession.

Up next

Ripon will close out its regular season this week. It will travel to Freedom for a non-conference game with the Irish today (Tuesday)and also will hit the road Thursday for a non-conference contest with the Clintonville Truckers.

The games will get underway at 4:30 p.m.