Big second half gives Jackson win over Farmington

A four-goal second half propelled the Jackson Indians girls soccer team over the Farmington Knights 5-0 on Monday at Jackson High School. Offensively, Jackson had a rather slow start in the first half with just one goal but put on a clinic in the second.

Maddie Stelling put the Indians on the board in the 13th minute, the first of five different scorers in the game for Jackson. The Indians carried the 1-0 lead into halftime, head coach Justin McMullen said the team's ball control was good albeit not as fast as they would have liked.

“Our ball movement was pretty good but in the first half Farmington made things a little bit difficult so we took a little bit longer to adjust to what they were doing tactically than I would have liked. But second half, we talked a little bit and made some adjustments and just kind of started to move the ball a little bit faster and worked off the ball as well,” McMullen said. “So that was the biggest difference for us offensively. Again, I thought we did a good job of keeping the ball we just didn't move very fast.”

The halftime adjustments worked right away with all four second-half goals coming in the first twenty minutes.

In the 51st and 52nd minutes, Rudi Klund and Olivia Klinkhardt scored back-to-back goals to put the Indians up 3-0. Just five minutes later two more back-to-back goals in the 57th and 59th minutes, this time from Rilee Monighan and Maya Domian giving Jackson the 5-0 victory.

McMullen said his team is always opportunistic when they get a scoring chance near the goal and many of them finish their shots well.

“We missed a couple today, I'll go back and look but felt like that we missed on some opportunities tonight,” McMullen said. “But to be able to get scoring from that many individuals is always nice for the coach to know that we have a lot of players that are capable of scoring.”

Although the offense did all of the scoring, the Jackson defense never let Farmington across the centerline. Indians goalkeeper Camryn Alsdorf saw no action as the midfielders and defenders did a great job of keeping the Knights at bay.

McMullen said the excellent play of the defense actually led to a lot of the things they were able to do on the offensive end.

“First and foremost, our defenders had a lot to do with us keeping the ball because they generated our attack. They were the ones that spearheaded things going forward for us,” McMullen said. “A lot of times what you saw is for us to begin our possession from the back and definitely using those defensive backs and they were able to push up higher on the field which allowed us to get a little bit deeper in their offensive third.”

Jackson (6-2) travels to Springfield, MO this weekend to play in the Kickapoo Varsity Tournament where they will take on Nixa, Glendale and Lee’s Summit West.