Highland soccer team drops road game at Mississippi Valley Conference foe Waterloo

Coming off a close 2-1 home loss to Mississippi Valley Conference foe Jerseyville, the Highland Lady Bulldogs soccer team hoped for a better result Tuesday, May 25, when they ventured to Waterloo for another league matchup.

However, Waterloo exploded for five goals over the final 20 minutes of the first half and ultimately took down HHS for a 9-1 home win at Rogers Elementary School.

Highland, which features six freshmen and one sophomore, dropped to 1-11 overall and 0-8 in MVC play. Second-place Waterloo improved to 10-6-2 (7-2) with the win.

“It is what it is for our season, but one thing that we appreciate about them (the players) is that they don’t give up,” Highland coach Victoria Nelson said. “They don’t give up and they just keep fighting.”

Joely Goulding and Jaycee Cotton each scored to give Waterloo a 2-0 lead just under the 20-minute mark of the first half.

Then, in the final 10 minutes of the opening half, Olivia Colson scored back-to-back goals and Natalie Gum added a goal with just under five minutes left to give the host Bulldogs a commanding 5-0 lead at the break.

On offense, Highland struggled to generate much pressure on Waterloo goalkeeper Lexi Stephens in the first half.

“It’s just, overall, we don’t have a lot of girls who play offense, so we’re hoping to get a few girls coming out next year who play offense. But the majority of our team (this year) is defensive so that’s why we’re playing to our strengths, which are defense and midfield. It wasn’t working for us today so we moved up some people to gain more offense,” Nelson said.

Waterloo then added four more goals in the final 18 minutes. Highland avoided the shutout as senior defender Piper Myer scored a goal with a little over 11 minutes left.

Nelson said, in spite of the rocky season, the team is improving and developing.

“We came in after a year of the girls not playing together for a year (due to the pandemic), and the first game was rough,” Nelson said. “But we move on and we work as a team and we get our passing in and we’ve had a lot more communication and a lot more passing than we had at the beginning of the year, so we have improved in a lot of areas.”

This story was originally published May 26, 2021 at 9:01 AM.