GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — No. 1 ranked Unity Christian girls soccer traveled to No. 2 West Catholic on Wednesday night for a battle in the OK Blue.
It was scoreless throughout the first half. The Falcons had a chance to score just before halftime as they drew the Unity goalie out of the box but it was Kirstin Dekock who was there to knock the ball away to the right of the net.
With 25 minutes left in the game, freshman Ava Landstra fought off a defender and took a cross body shot to just inside the bottom left post to score Unity's first goal.
"It was just a good win for the team and we're really glad with the outcome. In the moment I just knew that our team needed to be up 1-0 so I knew I needed to finish that one. It gives us a lot of confidence but we also need to be not too prideful and we need to know that we have to work hard to get victories," said Landstra.
Almost 20 minutes later, sophomore Ava Lutke saw an opening on the right side of the net and booted it in. That goal sealed the deal for Unity to beat West 2-0.
"I was dribbling down and it was just me. I was going straight towards the goal and I saw her wide open and I just passed it right in. It felt really good to finally get one," said Lutke.
Head Coach Randy Heethuis said after the game this was not their best outing. He said that his team played a little sloppy in the first half and didn't make the West goalie work that hard but says their depth allows them to sub in girls whenever they need to for fresh legs.
"The nice thing for us is that we have a lot of players and we can get lots of combinations. So that way if something isn't working we can go to the well and try to find somebody else and hopefully find the right combination at some point. We just kind of rotate them through and it's like hockey, we put a new line shift out there and hopefully we can keep a fresh group going," said Randy Heethuis.
Unity will travel to Mona Shores on Friday, April 5th for a game at 6:45pm.
