The Lady Cadets Soccer team traveled to Speedway High School tonight to play the Lady Sparkplugs for their last game of the season. Coming into tonight’s game, the Lady Cadets’ record on the season stands at 6-5-1 (3-2 ICC) and the Lady Sparkplugs’ record stands at 9-3-2 (6-0 ICC). Last season, the Lady Cadets defeated the Lady Sparkplugs 1-0. This victory allowed the Lady Cadets to capture their first Indiana Crossroads Championship girls soccer title and was a springboard to their 2021 Sectional championship. Both Cascade and Speedway were looking at tonight’s regular season finale as preparation for next week’s IHSAA soccer tournament when their teams will face good competition. The Lady Sparkplugs had an undefeated record in conference play and earned good victories within a much tougher schedule than the Lady Cadets. But the Cadets have been playing better over the past couple of weeks and hoped tonight’s game would give them confidence in next week’s Sectionals. Many of the quality wins for Speedway this season were created from the use of a wide, aggressive style of play that highlighted the more talented players in their starting lineup. The Cadets had faced a similar style of play with Danville and Greencastle but still struggled to handle the speed of Speedway at the start of the game. Speedway was able to dominate the first 10:00 minutes of the game and gained an early 1-0 lead from a ricocheted shot off of a Cadet defender’s back. But with the better play that the Cadets have been displaying over the past couple of weeks, they were able to balance out the flow of the game and keep the pressure on the Sparkplugs defense. As this pressure made the Speedway defense play harder than they wanted, the Cadets’ attacking players slowly wore down the Sparkplugs in the middle of the field trying to create a game tying goal. This consistent pressure and pace finally broke in the Cadets favor when Grace Trump put a shot on the Speedway goalie that wasn’t cleanly handled and found its way into the goal for the Cadets. This was Grace’s ninth goal of the season and was created by the hard work of the whole team moving the ball as a unit. The rest of the first half saw physical, exhausting play by both teams that only yielded a couple of quality shots and the half ended tied 1-1. The start of the second half saw two quick goals scored for each team. The Sparkplugs were able to score an immediate goal off of a poorly played ball by the Cadets’ defensive players. The Cadets came right back and pressed the ball deep into the Speedway defense. After a clear push on a Cascade player, the Lady Cadets were awarded a penalty kick at 36:35 mark in the second half. Anna Burns was selected to take the penalty kick and she placed the kick out of the goalie’s reach. Anna’s tenth goal of the season tied the game score at 2-2. With the score now tied again, the Lady Cadets and Lady Sparkplugs put everything they had for the next 30:00 minutes into trying to find that game winning goal. Each team had two or three really good chances to score but each team’s strong defense and solid goalkeeping kept the ball out of the net. The physically exhausting play continued for the rest of the second half and the game ended in a 2-2 tie. According to the ICC rules, any regular season tie would be broken by penalty kicks. For a normal penalty kick shootout, each team is asked to select five players to take shots on the goal from the penalty mark position until a winner is established. The Lady Cadets and Sparkplugs selected their five players to shoot and the Cadets went first. The Lady Cadets scored on their first and fourth kicks while the Sparkplugs scored on their fourth and fifth kicks. The first round of PKs was tied at 2-2 and a second group of players was selected to shoot. Regrettably, the Lady Cadets failed to score any penalty kicks in the second round and the Sparkplugs scored their seventh and eighth kicks to earn the victory over the Cadets. It was an amazing game to end the regular season for both teams. With the loss, the Lady Cadets fall back to 6-6-1 for their regular season games and the Lady Sparkplugs are now 10-3-2. The Cadets now take a couple of days off and prepare for their first Sectional game on Tuesday, October 4th against North Putnam. The game is scheduled to begin at 5:00 p.m. Cascade High School is scheduled as the host site this year for Sectional 41 which will include Southmont, South Vermillion, Greencastle, and Bethesda Christian. Game Summary Cascade 1 - 1 2 PK 2 Speedway 1 - 1 2 PK 4 Goals/Assists: 1H 11:54 Grace Trump (9), (Assist Anna Burns- 5) 2H 36:35 PK- Anna Burns (10) PK Results (X successful attempt and score) Laura Cameron X 1-0 Creedance Chittenden 1-0 Anna Burns 1-0 Ainsley Engel X 2-1 Grace Trump 2-2 Zoey Wyneken 2-2 Ava Cook 2-2 Caitlyn Russell 2-3 Emily Nava 2-4