Cape Central and Notre Dame to meet for district title

The Cape Central Tigers and Notre Dame Bulldogs won their Class 3 District 1 semi-final games to earn their place in the district championship. Notre Dame started the afternoon by defeating Sikeston 4-0 and Cape Central finished the night with an overtime victory over St. Vincent 2-1.

Notre Dame struck fast against Sikeston with a 5th-minute goal from Addison Clippard to give the Bulldogs in blue a 1-0 lead. Erika West put another on the board in the 31st minute to give Notre Dame the 2-0 lead they held until halftime.

The second half went the same as the first with two goals for Notre Dame, Maya Thebeau found the back of the net in the 51st minute. Clippard scored her second of the day in the 78th minute to secure the 4-0 victory.

Bulldogs head coach Ryan Schweain said his team worked together well to beat a good Sikeston team.

“It was a good win, a lot of unselfish plays and we moved the ball around well tonight,” Schweain said. “The first half was better than the second half. We lost some focus in the second half, but it was a good game against a team with a solid defensive plan and we were able to break through a couple of times.”

Cape Central’s game was a bit of a different story with the Tigers having to battle through overtime to survive. St. Vincent struck first in the 15th minute with a Sadie Cissell goal to give the Indians a 1-0 lead they carried to halftime.

Half number two and overtime was the Madison Phelps and Celeste Gutierrez show for the Tigers. Phelps scored the equalizing goal from about 30 yards out, squeaking through the goalkeeper's hands.

In the overtime period, which is a first-goal wins format, Gutierrez raced down the field on a breakaway and earned a freekick for the Tigers. Gutierrez launched a cross pass and found Phelps who put the game-winner into the back of the net igniting a huge celebration from her teammates.

Tigers head coach Duncan McKinley said the message for his team before overtime was ‘we’re gonna get it done.’

“I told them not even to think about the second 15 or to think about the PKs because we were gonna get done in the first 15. We were absolutely exhausted and I don't think we wanted to play anymore,” McKinley said. “We wanted to just to get it done as quick as we could and luckily we were able to do that in the first five and it's just really fortunate.”

The Tigers and Bulldogs will rematch their March 21st game on Thursday at 6 p.m. at Cape Central High School.