Alton goalie Lyla Cowan (1) slides out to make a save against Marquette’s Alex Stephan during Friday’s game at Public School Stadium.
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Alivia Noss of Marquette (7) and teammate Alex Stephan (3) celebrate Noss’s goal in Friday’s game against Alton at Public School Stadium.
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Alton’s Sage Cowan (14) moves the ball against Marquette’s Remmi Copeland Friday at Public School Stadium.
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Avery Beane of Alton (9) moves the ball against Marquette’s Izzi Hough (6) Friday at Public School Stadium.
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Remmi Copeland of Marquette moves the ball against Alton Friday at Public School stadium.
Pete Hayes/The Telegraph
Alivia Noss of Marquette (7) heads the ball against Alton Friday at Public School stadium.
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Alton’s Claire Delehanty (22) and Marquette’s Grace Fischer battle for the ball during Friday’s soccer game at Public School Stadium in Alton.
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Alton goalie Lyla Cowan, center watches as teammates’ Sage Cowan (14) and Peyton Delehanty move the ball upfield against Marquette Catholic Friday at Public School Stadium.
Pete Hayes/The Telegraph
Alex Stephan, right, and teammate Izzi Hough celebrate Stephan’s goal in the first half of Friday’s game against Alton at Public School Stadium. Hough assisted on the play.
Pete Hayes/The Telegraph
ALTON – X’s and O’s are important, but in soccer, the wild card is emotion. More specifically, dealing with it.
Friday at Public School Stadium, Alton wanted to hitch a ride on it and Marquette wanted disavow it. In the end, Marquette was able to step back enough from the emotion to register a 4-1 girls soccer victory in the city championship game against Alton.
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The Explorers led 2-0 at halftime, saw Alton get within 2-1 early in the second half, then righted their ship and pulled away.
“I think that’s all part of it, ” Alton coach Shayna Lacey said of the emotions of the match against Marquette. “I’ve lived here long enough now that I know the City Cup is a thing. If we’re going to show up play in any game, this is the game and I think emotions help – the right emotions.”
Marquette coach Brian Hoener said the topic had been mentioned to his team often during preparation for the game.
“We knew there was going to be a lot of emotion in it,” Hoener said. “We wanted to make sure we handled that emotion. We thought they were a little more emotional team as far as how they played than we were and we were trying to stay more composed and play our style.
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“We wanted to dictate the style of game,” he said. “Was it going to be emotional and hard-pressed or was it going to be a little bit more possession. I thought we did a good job with a little but more possession.”
The loss dropped Alton to 2-12 on the season. Marquette is 8-4-2. Tuesday, the Redbirds return to action Tuesday at Granite City and Marquette willplay at Metro-East Lutheran.
The Explorers’ win was their fourth straight over Alton and fifth in the last six against the Redbirds in the series that resumed in 2021 after a four-year hiatus.
Friday, Marquette dominated possession time and created numerous scoring chances. But the Explorers led just 2-0 at halftime on a goal in the 26th minute by Alex Stephan assisted by Izzi Hough and a 30-yard aerial blast by Alivia Noss that snuck under the crossbar.
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The rest of the half, Alton sophomore goalie Lyla Cowan held the Explorers at bay. Cowan had seven saves in the first half and finished the game with 15 saves. Marquette goalie Jessica Eales had four saves.
After halftime, Alton grabbed momentum when it took advantage of miscommunication among the Marquette defense. Elizabeth Sorbie pounced on the ball deep along the end line to Marquette goalie Jessica Eales’ right. Sorbie pushed the ball in from close range, giving the Redbirds new-found life and cutting the Marquette led to 2-1. Ellen Anderson provided the assist on the goal.
“We got disorganized in the backfield,” Hoener said. “You hate to give up one, especially one you feel you could have handled a little bit better. We were disorganized and they took full advantage of it.
“We knew they were going to keep playing. They’re well-coached, they play hard. We knew they weren’t just gonna lay over in the second half. We gave them a bit of life by not really handling it well in the backfield, but I liked our response.”
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That response included a pair of goals from Izzi Hough and a return to a more organized Marquette defense.
“When the ball’s at Izzi’s foot, good things happen,” Hoener said. “She sees the field well, she distributes the ball well. We like to have her on the ball in the middle of the field. She sees the entire field well.”
The Redbirds’ goal came on their their final shot on goal of the game .
“I thought to start the second half, we got caught up in the emotion of it,” Hoener said. “Games like this can be difficult because of the emotion. We talked a lot before the game and yesterday at practice about not getting caught up in the emotion of it and I thought in the first half, we did a really nice job and late in the second half, I thought we did a really good job being a little more composed.
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“But there was a 10-minute stretch in the second half when things started to go their way and we started to feed into that by coming unglued a little bit.
“I thought when we got that third goal, we got back down to who we were and didn’t give them a whole lot of chances the rest of the way. I was happy with the way we responded.”
Hough made it 3-1 in the 66th minute, assisted by Stephan. Three minutes later, Hough scored off a rebound following a diving save by Cowan to cap the scoring.
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“I feel like it was competitive,” Alton’s Lacey said. “It just is trying to figure how do we get to the point where we’re stringing together 80 minutes.
“The whole thing this year is we’re getting one percent better every day, which I think we are.”