Girls soccer wins 5-1 against Mills

On Dec. 1, the Aragon girls soccer team inaugurated their season with an away game against Mills that ended in a decisive 5-1 victory. Since Mills is in a lower division, Aragon players had an optimistic outlook heading into the match.

“I feel good about the game coming up,” said senior Phoebe Harger. “In the past, [Mills] hasn’t been super challenging, [so] we’re just ready to see how we play together as a team.”

Since the match occurred in preseason, the team came onto the field without a record for this season while Mills had just two games under their belt. Furthermore, both a new roster and new staffing made the match slightly uncertain for the Dons.

“I expected us to do pretty well,” said senior and co-captain Lorelei Rustay. “But given our new coach and just the new team, I wasn’t really sure how [the game] would go. But I’m really happy with the way things turned out.”

Aragon also plans to develop their game as they learn how to work together within this year’s team.

“[The goal is] to feel out how we are as a team and really figure out what we need to be working on to succeed in the season coming up,” said senior Abigail Dunwoody.

Aragon started out the match strong, with the team’s defense managing to keep the ball out of their half of the field for the most part.

“Defensively, I think we’re really strong,” Rustay said. “We didn’t let too many players behind us a lot, which was really good.”

Fifteen minutes into the game, junior and right-wing Amelia Ortiz crossed the ball to junior and forward Evelina Karsh, who pounced at the opportunity to put Aragon on the board with a smooth ground shot to the goal’s corner.

When Mills managed to get their team forward and crossed the ball to a prime scoring spot in Aragon’s penalty box, Rustay, who was in goal at the time, quickly rushed up and claimed the ball as her own. With this action, Mills’ first and last chance of the first half ended.

“The strength of our team, playing wise, [is] our defense … [since] we also have really talented goalies,” Harger said.

Barely five minutes before halftime, a handball in the 18-yard box, committed by a Mills player, resulted in a penalty called against them. Senior and co-captain Madison Ketcham stepped up to take it and directed the ball into the net. When halftime was called soon after, the score was 2-0, Aragon in the lead.

“The biggest thing to realize is the talent is there, we just have to learn how to work together … and become one,” said head coach Kaylyn Toyama.

Aragon’s team was able to start even stronger after halftime, jogging onto the field focused and freshly energized.

“In the second half, we were able to get into the flow of things and finally connect passes and work really well together,” Ketcham said. “We were able to get a lot more energy just because we got used to playing together.”

Ketcham, who usually plays defense, started the half up top as a forward. This turned out to be a wise alteration, as she almost immediately scored off of a counterattack play to pull even further ahead of Mills.

“We knew we needed to score some more goals … [and] were able to load up the middle and the sides more as well as the top, which helped us score,” Rustay said.

Within the next ten minutes, Ketcham seized another opportunity to strike the ball, which soared above the head of the Mills keeper and landed into the net. Not long after, she followed up her hat-trick with yet another goal to solidify Aragon’s lead, 5-0.

Despite the score, the Mills players refused to give up and rallied to find the back of Aragon’s net five minutes before the whistle blew to signal the end of the match.

While the team was able to see how they played together, moving forward there’s still more that they are working to set in place.

“[Going forwards, we’ll be] solidifying a lineup and formations that we feel comfortable in, because we have been trying out different formations,” Toyama said.

Next, the team hopes to extend their victory streak as they head into the rest of the preseason matches.

“We have a pretty difficult preseason with SHC and Monte Vista coming up,” Rustay said. “I think [the goal is] just keeping our composure and getting through those games with hopefully a win.”

The team now looks ahead to Dec. 11 for their next match, a home game against Woodside at 4:30 pm.