Photos Courtesy of Nicole Miller (MP Sports Social Media)
A pair of tightly contested River Valley Conference soccer matches went Mid-Prairie’s way in Wellman Monday night when the Golden Hawk boys and girls took down Tipton by matching 2-1 scores. The girls contest was scoreless to break. Amara Jones got the Hawks on the board in the 58th minute with her sixth goal of the year. Tipton would find the equalizer in the final 10 minutes of regulation, sending the game to extra tme. Neither team could find the winner in the first 10 minutes. In the second extra stanza, Mid-Prairie’s Zoey Curtiss sent the fans home happy in the 97th minute with the walk-off goal, her fourth of the season, on a Paityn Jennings assist. Curtiss spoke with KCII Sports after the match about the goal and win. Curtiss broke things down like this, “We just kept pushing and getting chances. I just run on adrenaline and go for every ball. PJ (Paityn Jennings), had a really good pass to me and then I shot it. It was a really good win. We fought hard.”
Golden Hawk keeper Kina Miller stood on her head in the win, stopping 20 Tiger shots to secure the victory. Mid-Prairie is now 6-3 as the Tigers fall to 4-3.
The Golden Hawk boys got above the .500 mark for the first time this season with their one goal win over Tipton. Owen Trimpe had both goals for the Hawks, giving him six combined in Mid-Prairie’s last two matches. His first, on a Grady Miller assist, gave the Golden Hawks a 1-0 lead going to half. Tipton tied the contest in the 60th minute, only to see Trimpe do it again, this time on a connection with Tucker Miller, for his sixth of the year, that would give Mid-Prairie the lead for good. After the match, Trimpe talked about his goals and defender Andrew Stultz talked about the Golden Hawk defense locking up the win. Trimpe said, “My speed is probably one of the big factors but a lot of my teammates are just taking it to corner and looking back to me when I’m in the middle where I can just finish it. (My teammates and me) have a pretty good connection because they see me immediately when they need to play the ball and I’m there when they need me. The second goal was like ‘hey, we really need one’. If I start playing across and start seeing the gaps in the middle and if someone can get it to me, it just all happened to workout and I put it in the net.”
Stultz added, “We just had to keep the high press and keep it going, even when we were a little bit tired. With the formation that we have on defense, we’re able to move a lot more fluidly, so if someone wants to go up and start going on offense, there’s always someone just ready to hop back right away and everybody knows what everyone else is doing.”
Joe Hall added four saves in goal for Mid-Prairie. The Golden Hawks are now 5-4 this season, Tipton is 2-6. Both Mid-Prairie teams are on the road Tuesday when the girls travel to Wapello and the boys are at Highland.