Hanover falls short in first regional final

Updated: October 15, 2011 10:32PM

ARGOS — They were parading in Argos on Saturday evening, honoring the Argos girls and boys soccer teams, with both teams capturing regional titles.

The No. 14 Dragons girls team won 3-0 on their own field at the expense of No. 20 Hanover Central, which was playing in its first-ever regional. The Argos boys won 6-0 over West Lafayette.

It was just the second loss of the season for the Wildcats (16-2).

Argos scored its first goal just 6:42 into the match when Jami Patterson fed Allison Patterson, who drilled home a nice cross to Allison Flower, who fed Stefany Parrish for the tap-in.

“We had a mental breakdown on that goal, they had a good cross to get the ball into position for the score,” Hanover coach Jim Pattison said.

Argos scored again with about seven minutes left in the first half, and its third goal came midway into the second half.

Pattison noted that the Argos program has been playing soccer since the 1990s, while Hanover started in 2000. He believes his girls now understand what it takes to win. There are now more girls playing summer soccer and Hanover just did not have the manpower Argos had.

“We had one sub, they had a lot of subs,” he said. “When were were subbing for one girl, they had five or six coming in. We had several girls playing club ball (last summer) and we had one girl that traveled to Brazil to play,” he said, noting he pushed his team to improve on its 14-6-1 record last season, and it did. “No one expected this much success.”

Pattison said that one of the problems was getting his team ready to play a team Hanover had never seen. And Argos had only faced one region squad — Boone Grove.

“It was hard to scout a team like that; we didn’t figure out how to play them at the start and it was late into the first half when we did,” he said. “Argos stepped up to the challenge (tonight), they have a good team, with a lot of talented players. We gave them a lot of pressure in the second half.”

And as play developed in the final 40 minutes, Pattison said his team opened up Argos around the goal. The Wildcats were able to get more shots off. They just didn’t score, partially because the Dragons had a tall and talented goalkeeper.

Kristen Nirtaut and Blayr Poston both scored 33 goals this season for the Wildcats, who outscored their opponents 112-19.

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