BY TAYLOR SIMMS

The Truman Girls Soccer team has competed in four games recently. They didn’t win every single game but each girl played fairly well. While the varsity team was at Pembroke Hill tournament, the JV team competed against their JV and beat them 1-0. This was a strong win for the team as it proved to everyone that the girls are good at what they do and most importantly showed themselves that they can compete with good teams. The tides turned going into a week of games with difficult opponents and on Tues., April 11 the girls played Liberty North at home and lost but it was a pretty decent game.

The jv team lost 2-0 and the varsity 7-0. The scores do look a little depressing but the girls with the help of their coaches, Manny Tovar, Ken Halford, and Andrew Plaster, were able to learn from their mistakes and be able to improve immensely at practice for the upcoming games. That following Thursday, April 13 brought Liberty High School to the field for another difficult match. This game was also a little bit saddening to the girls as they put up a good fight but were not quite able to take home a win, as the jv lost 7-0 and the varsity 6-0.

“The only thing that is needed is to step up our aggressiveness to make us better competition,” junior Karleigh Burnett said.

One thing the girls can take away from last week’s games is that they played hard and to keep playing hard as the season goes on. They will always have another chance to defeat these teams as in the upcoming weeks they will travel to Liberty Middle School to play these teams again. Walking into the week the girls knew that they were going to need to play well and hard in order to compete with these two really skilled teams and no matter what the score was they will always have the games to look back on to improve themselves.

“Playing Liberty and Liberty North showed us a different speed of game and I think that will really help us to defeat upcoming opponents because we will know how to play faster,” freshman Alex Mesh said. “Going into the SJC game we moved the ball quickly and played fast giving us the wins.”

Yesterday, April 17, the girls played St. Joe Central at home again. For those of you who are unaware, Truman and SJC have grown to develop a bit of a rivalry with each other, soccer especially, as their games are usually fairly close and tend to end in ties. However, this season the girls proved to be better as they defeated SJC jv 3-0 and varsity 2-1 with no overtime.

This game helped to put the girls into good spirits and get them ready for the game against Fort Osage on Thurs., April 20. SJC and Truman are great match ups for each other as their plays and skills and overall atmospheres tend to mimic each other and these factors result in good games for both teams and the audience as well.

Truman has played a series of home games within the past three weeks as they have played seven consecutive games and the Fort game will make eight. Good news though, the girls will be on the road for their last six games starting next week. Be there at the field on Thursday to support the girls in their last home game as they take on The Fort.