O’FALLON – The Edwardsville High School girls soccer team has an interesting history with O’Fallon.
Edwardsville has won two out of the last three postseason meetings but hasn’t won a regular-season Southwestern Conference matchup since April 15, 2021.
That was the last time O’Fallon lost a Southwestern Conference game.
They met for this season’s second SWC match Tuesday evening in O’Fallon as the Panthers put their 45-game conference winning streak on the line. They scored early, but couldn’t hold on, as Edwardsville rallied to win 2-1.
It was O’Fallon’s first loss of the season as it fell to 12-1-1 and 7-1 in the conference. The Tigers improved to 8-3-3 and 5-1 in league play. If both teams win their remaining SWC games, they will split the regular season conference title.
The Tigers haven’t won an SWC title since the 2018-19 season. O’Fallon has won four straight post-pandemic. That meant Edwardsville’s seniors had not beaten O’Fallon in the regular season.
“I’m sure it means a whole lot for them,” Edwardsville head coach Abby Federmann said.
“It’s great to finish out the season like this,” senior captain and key center back Blakely Hockett said. “We don’t have many games left, and it’s kind of been a rougher season for us. So, I’m happy we’re getting our edge back. I’m just really proud of these girls. We fought really, really hard.”
The Tigers had to fight from a 1-0 deficit just 92 seconds into the game. Senior forward Allie Tredway scored her 15th goal of the season on the game’s first shot. Edwardsville junior goalie Genny Burroughs dove to her left and got her fingertips to it, but Tredway’s shot was placed just far enough out of reach to take the early lead.
“It was just a miscommunication,” Federmann said on the game’s opening goal. “And O’Fallon is so good that you have to communicate against them because they move the ball so well and their transition is so, everywhere, you’ve got to make sure that you are marked, and they weren’t.”
Edwardsville tied the game in the 26th minute, nearly with an incredible goal.
Freshman defender Olivia Wolz flew up the left side of the field and unleashed a shot from about 35 yards out that rang off the post and back into play. Quick to pounce on the rebound was the onrushing Wren Rowe. The senior forward collided with O’Fallon’s sophomore keeper, Brynn Ori, but poked it right past her to tie the game.
“I was almost disappointed if somebody wouldn’t have followed it up because it was that pretty,” Federmann said on Wolz’s initial shot. “Wren is just our workhorse. She’s always in the right place at the right time. She’ll always be in the box, and thankfully, she was right there.”
But the Tigers weren’t done there. A goal right before halftime proved to be the game-winner.
Junior forward Gabby Thompson ran onto a through ball between the midfield line and the 18-yard box. At the time, Ori was playing high outside of her box and got caught in the middle. Thompson noticed this, took a touch around Ori, and shot it into an empty net from about 20 yards out. It was her seventh goal of the season.
With time winding down, the ever-so dangerous Claire Nieroda almost caught Edwardsville’s defense lacking. The senior forward weaved through three or four defenders before shooting it right on from just inside the 18-yard box. Luckily for Edwardsville, the shot came straight at Burroughs, who made the instinctive save.
A frantic first 40 minutes were in the books, and O’Fallon was feeling the pressure of being down a goal.
“[Edwardsville] put some pressure on us, and I don’t think we handled it as well as we should have, and we got a little unnerved,” O’Fallon head coach Justin Judiscak said. “They find the goal on the big shot and rebound, and that obviously fired them up.”
“In my opinion, we didn’t find the energy that we needed to match theirs today,” he continued. “Kudos to them, they played a great game. You know they wanted it today. They came out with a lot of energy, a lot of enthusiasm, and they deserve to win.”
It’s the first time the two teams split their regular-season meetings since the 2020-21 campaign.
“For me, I’m kind of leery now, because we usually go into postseason 0-2 against them, so we get fired up,” Federmann said. “Now, they’re going to have momentum, we’re going to have momentum, so it should be an exciting postseason.”
“But I’m thrilled with the way they came together and played,” she continued. “Seeing Wren [Rowe] get a goal, and Gabby [Thompson] taking the shots that she needs to be taking all season long and beating girls, it just kind of clicked for me, which was really nice.”
O’Fallon came into the game with a defense that was buzzing. The team opened the season on a 12-game win streak, 10 of them shutouts, only allowing three goals on the season. The Tigers were the first to put two past them so far.
But it was Edwardsville’s defense that stood tall for the remaining 78-plus minutes after the early miscommunication goal.
“We changed it up a bit to bring Hockett back to center back,” Federmann said. “Hockett and [Madi] Kline as center backs, that’s a tough two. And with Ava [Leitschuh] and [Olivia] Wolz, that’s a tough back line. They knew they were going to play the 80 minutes, and they played so well.”
“Madi Kline is a stud back there,” Hocket said of her freshman center back counterpart. “I thought everyone in the backline played great tonight. Everyone played hard, we got first to the ball, we won all of our tackles, and that’s what we needed tonight.”
Edwardsville was supposed to have more of a defensive shape Tuesday night, but those plans changed after the early deficit.
“I actually went into this game different than I’ve gone into any game with them, and it was, let’s not get scored on in the first minute,” Federmann said with a laugh. “So, I made a really great backline, and I put my other center back in front of my backline, and I was going to be really defensive-minded; and then we got scored on, and I threw all the cards out the window.”
With the win over O’Fallon, Edwardsville’s final few Southwestern Conference games just got a whole lot more meaningful. The Tigers still have to play Alton, home and away, as well as Belleville West and Collinsville on the road, both of which will be tough tasks.
The Panthers, much more ahead in their conference schedule, only have to host Belleville East and Belleville West.
