Thunder Mountain High School senior Mackenzie Olver hit a highlight shot against Ketchikan in the final home match of her career on Saturday at the TMHS pitch in another Lady Falcons battle with the visiting Lady Kings.
“I am very proud to have scored for my team,” Olver said. “I think it is representative of all of the hard work we have put in. While I had hoped we would have been able to get a few more in, we pushed hard today and I am pleased with the result we finished with.”
Olver gained control of a ball roughly 20 yards out and lobbed a shot over the Ketchikan keeper for a 1-0 advantage.
“It is kind of what we had talked about in practice,” TMHS coach Cindy Eriksen said. “The Ketchikan goalie plays really high for a goalie so we had talked about trying a chip shot.”
Olver’s shot backed the keeper to her line but the ball carried enough to float over and in.
“I was pretty excited for her,” Eriksen said. “It is something we have been working towards these last few weeks, just trying to get a goal. I know that it felt like a win for everyone to finally score.”
[Olver signs to play college soccer]
Ketchikan struck back in the final 15 minutes of the second half, earning a penalty kick for Lady Falcons hand ball in their own box.
Kayhi’s Aspen Bauer put the shot in for the 1-1 tie.
The Lady Falcons had a number of close shots for the second day in a row.
The closest chances came in the final minutes of the first half when junior Kaidree Hartman ripped a shot off the Kayhi post and then put another ball just wide and then a third shot into the side of the net, all within a three minute span.
Senior Kaelin Tibbles put a shot directly at the Kayhi keeper with 10 seconds remaining in first half action.
“I thought we played great,” Eriksen said. “You can see that we are improving every game. We take each game and talk about areas of play that we want to work on. We have been moving players around to a lot of different positions throughout the season just to see what the best fit is for everyone and I think we have finally figured out everyone’s strong position. The girls played so much better than our last outing with Ketchikan just two weeks ago at Ketchikan. You could see there was a big difference. These were good games and it is fun to play against Ketchikan, they are a good team.”
Thunder Mountain next plays at Juneau-Douglas High School: Yadaa.at Kalé, Tuesday, at 5 p.m. and will finish their season with a road trip to play Redington in Anchorage on Saturday.
