The Lady Cadets begin their 2022 soccer season hosting Faith Christian (Lafayette) High School. This early season game between the Eagles and Cadets started the 2021 season as well with Faith Christian winning a very competitive game 2-1 up in Lafayette. Both teams were IHSAA Sectional winners in 2021 (Faith Christian Sectional 38 and Cascade Sectional 41) and have received preseason votes for 1A, Faith Christian #9 and Cascade #13. Coming into tonight’s game with Faith Christian, the Lady Cadets Soccer Team knew that all the games this season would take an extra effort to play from start to finish. The team had graduated six players from last season’s team and those six players played considerable minutes on the field. This season’s roster is equally talented but lacks the experience of playing together on the field and in different positions. Tonight’s game with Faith Christian was an excellent test for this new group of players. The Lady Cadets got off to a good start in the first 10:00 of the game and controlled the pace up and down the field. Coming off of a Faith Christian turnover, Ava Cook made a great throw-in into Creedance Chittenden who kept control of the ball and poked the ball past the Faith Christian goalie with 26:39 left in the first half. As Faith Christian and the Lady Cadets kept moving the ball up the field, the pace of the game slowly wore down the Cadets in the first half. Faith Christian became more confident in their offensive movement and squeezed the ball through the Cadets’ defensive line and scored a game tying goal with 4:29 to go in the first half. The first half ended with the score tied 1-1. The second half belonged to the Eagles of Faith Christian. A small mistake in the early minutes of the second half put the Eagles in great scoring position but the Cadets defense kept the ball out of the net in that situation. Sadly, immediately after the Cadets got themselves out of one tough moment, they put themselves right back into another tough moment. Faith Christian won possession back after a Cascade turnover and drove the ball right at the Cascade goal. After two open field passes without much defensive pressure from the exhausted Cadets, Faith Christian blasted a goal from just above the top of the goal box and took a 2-1 lead with 34:37 remaining in the game. After falling behind 2-1, the Cadets put together 20:00 good minutes of offensive and defensive movement in an attempt to tie the game. This last strong effort to try and tie the game pushed the Cadets to physical exhaustion and the Cadets made a series of mistakes that Faith Christian took advantage of to score three goals in a little under 3:00. After the score of the game had expanded to 5-1 in favor of Faith Christian, both teams spread the field out and moved the ball safely around the field to wind down the game clock. The game ended 5-1 in favor of Faith Christian. The loss for the Cadets puts their season record at 0-1 with the team’s next game on Wednesday, August 17th at North Putnam. The game is expected to start at 5:30 p.m. Game Summary Cascade 1 - 0 1 Faith Christian 1 - 4 5 Goals/Assists: Goal: Creedance Chittenden (1), Assist: Ava Cook (1)