Three Iowa Falls-Alden spring sports teams will be in action Thursday.
The girls soccer team will play at Webster City, which’ll air on 99 The Wave. The Cadets (3-1, 3-0 NCC) will look to bounce back from their only loss, 8-0 to #1 (2A) Waverly-Shell Rock Monday. They’ve scored 15 goals in conference play and have given up one. Head Coach Morgan Vierkandt hopes the offense can continue to be the focal point, as opposed to last year’s defensive mentality.
“The last three years when we’ve won the conference, we’ve kind of run on a defense first mentality,” Vierkandt says. “But it was also led by three girls who had been starting the whole time and graduated last year. So now we’re kind of morphing our team a little bit. I want to be a lot more attack heavy, especially with the new rule changes with no overtime. I don’t want to end up with some of those 0-0 games we had last year and then ended up winning them either 1-0 in regulation or going to PKs. I think we had a couple overtime wins that would have been ties now. So it’s really kind of developing offensive pressure and shifting our focus towards scoring goals and then playing defense at the same time, rather than playing defense first and then scoring second.”
Adessa Gillespie leads with six goals.
Webster City (1-3-1, 1-2 NCC) is coming off a 2-2 tie against Wright County. The Cadets have won 19 straight in the series.
The boys soccer team (0-3-1, 0-2-1 NCC) will go for their first win when they host Webster City. In their last game, they tied 0-0 against Clear Lake. Webster City (3-0, 3-0 NCC) has outscored its opponents 15-4, and will go for its 10th straight win over the Cadets. Both games will start at 5:30.
The girls track & field team will be at the Lady Wolverine Invitational at Dike-New Hartford. Isabelle Janssen will look to stay within the top 32 fastest times in the 100m hurdles to qualify for the Drake Relays.
“It’s really exciting, and I just think I need to work on a few more minor details to try to get a better time there too,” Janssen says. “I really try to get out and really get to the first hurdle fast and then try to attack each hurdle in between so I can keep my speed up.”
The meet will start at 4:45.
