St. Vincent girls soccer team earns trip to Class 1 final four

St. Vincent freshman goalkeeper Katie Mattingly finally will get her chance to play in the final four after watching her older sister Kristin play in the last two with the Indians girls soccer team.

Katie Mattingly and this year's St. Vincent team punched its ticket to the program's third consecutive Class 1 final four with its 2-0 victory at John Burroughs High School in Saturday's state quarterfinal game.

"After watching it for the last two years, all I kept thinking is I want to do it too," Katie Mattingly said. "It makes me want to have it even more after seeing how happy she was from winning it. I want to be able to do that too."

Neither team managed a goal in the first half and the game still was scoreless when a mist began to fall about 10 minutes into the second half.

"Once we started getting into the game, all I kept thinking was, 'We need a goal, we need a goal,' because I did not want to go to overtime or a shootout," Katie Mattingly said. "But we kept pushing. I wasn't that nervous though because we had so many shots on goal, I knew one was going to go in soon."

The Indians finally grabbed the lead when junior Kayla Seabaugh buried a shot off a feed from freshman Holly Blandford.

"That ball kind of skipped across and Kayla was in the right spot at the right time to punch it in the back of the net," St. Vincent coach Dusty Wengert said.

St. Vincent senior defender Kelci Besand said she felt relief when Seabaugh found the back of the net.

"As a defender, we just wanted a goal so the pressure was off," Besand said. "We were like, 'Please score, please score.' But as a team, we kept it together. We just kept connecting passes and moving and going to the ball and moving hard. Eventually our chance came off of a cross and we got it in. Just keeping our composure helped us a lot, I think."

It only took about five minutes for the Indians to double their lead when sophomore Holly Cissell used her left foot to skip a shot past the John Burroughs goalie. Senior Valerie Smith earned an assist on the goal.

St. Vincent only allowed one shot on goal in the contest.

"We were really making sure we were keeping it to the outside and were always pushing up and challenging the balls," Katie Mattingly said about her team's defense.

The Indians nearly scored in the first half, but junior Courtney Heberlie's header went over the goal.

"I thought we controlled the majority of the first half," Wengert said. "We created some really nice opportunities early on."

St. Vincent improved to 21-4 and will face Orchard Farm, a 4-3 overtime winner against John F. Kennedy, in Friday's Class 1 state semifinal at the Anheuser-Busch Center in Fenton, Mo. The game is scheduled to start at 11 a.m.

"It's such a thrill just to be the third year in a row, especially my senior year," Besand said about making the final four. "It's very exciting."

Besand said part of the excitement arises from the team's trip back to the A-B Center. The Indians won their first six games before suffering two consecutive defeats to start the season. The second loss, a 3-0 setback to St. Pius, ignited a new attitude in the team.

"Ever since then we've had this desire to show people what we really are," Besand said. "At that point, they kind of doubted us, I think, and they weren't sure we could get back to the final four like we have been. We lost a lot of key players last year and had a lot of freshmen coming in, but our attitude changed and we had a desire to show people we really could get back."

Now St. Vincent will try to improve on last year's third-place finish. The Indians won the state title in 2009.

"It's probably more gratifying this year than it has been the last few years," Wengert said about reaching the final four. "The first year you go, you don't know what to expect. Last year, I thought maybe we went in a little overconfident and relaxed and didn't play to our capabilities, whereas this year we're definitely going to relish being in there and not taking anything for granted and we're going to go do our best."