Platte County’s Sloan Kassen crosses up a Fort Osage defender in the Lady Pirates sixth consecutive victory on April 8.
With a new year and new faces, the results have been the same for the Platte County girls’ soccer team (8-1) who has now rattled off seven straight wins early in the season.
After falling to Staley (6-1) 1-0 in their second contest of the year in the highly competitive Platte County Invitational to debut the spring season, the Lady Pirates are on fire. Platte County is teasing the possibility of repeating the history of last year when it strung together 15 consecutive wins after dropping a game in the early season tournament and finishing with a 24-3 record and an appearance at the Class 3 State Quarterfinals.
“We started out with our tournament, which is always a good way to start the season with some good competition,” Platte County head girls’ soccer coach Ashlyn Brantley said. “We have some new players coming out who are getting some time on the varsity side, but it’s looking good for us so far with a lot of rotations since we are pretty deep; so, it’s looking like we’re in for a good season.”
After dealing with a bit of an injury bug in the first stretch of games, Platte County is finally 100 percent healthy. In the Lady Pirates’ first eight games, their defense – and freshman goalkeeper Finley Kaser – has been dominant, shutting out six opponents thus far and only allowing two goals all season.
“We’re trying to play smart in the back; we have some new players working together in the back, so we want to continue to keep and control the ball. The defense controls the pace of the game, so we want to make sure that we are possessing and doing what we are needing to do and not just kicking it over the top,” Brantley said.
After Platte County won its road debut 2-1 at St. Joseph’s Central (5-2) on March 28, the Lady Pirates have outscored their opponents 35 to zero. Platte County’s most recent victim at home was Fort Osage (2-3) who was outmatched and lost 2-0 when the Lady Pirates scored both goals in the first half when they had eight shots and seven shots on goal on April 8.
With 29:47 left in the opening half, Hannah Stone snuck one past the Lady Indians’ goalkeeper before her younger sister assisted on the Lady Pirates’ second goal less than 10 minutes later. Lauren Stone broke loose down the left sideline and eventually found Lily Kytasaari in the box and the freshman found the back of the net to put Platte County up 2-0 at the break.
Platte County continued to be aggressive offensively and control the time of possession in the second half, but it was unable to add another goal to the scoreboard. The Lady Pirates had 13 shots, five of which that were on goal, in the final 40:00 of action.
“We had a ton of shots and that is what we are looking for and working on this week, being creative on the attacking side and creating those chances. I’m happy that we are creating those chances and shots on goal; now we just have to work on finishing them, but also credit to the keeper, she did a good job,” Brantley said.
The Lady Pirates added another victory to their season total when they beat Blue Springs (1-6) on the road 1-0 on April 11. Platte County’s next challenger will be Smithville (3-0) when the Kansas City Suburban Conference Blue Division rival will host the Lady Pirates on April 14.