St. Charles Goalkeeper Plays Key Role in Win

A solid defense played a key role in the St. Charles Pirates’ Gateway Athletic North Conference North victory over the  Bulldogs at Zumwalt South in St. Peters last night. 

“We’ve been defending well lately,” St. Charles head coach Rodney Orrick said after the 2-1 win. “It doesn’t matter weather we go in a three-back system or a four-back system. They’re doing a good job of keeping the goals against down. Tonight, they were really put to the test.”

Emily White, Jordan Trautmann, Erika Teson, and Lydia Haake all played in the backfield for the Pirates. St. Charles goalkeeper Taylor Wolf had 11 saves in the contest.

“Taylor Wolf was huge for us tonight,” Orrick said. “We’ve really been challenging her to come up big and she did that for us tonight. She kept us in it. Her effort in the backline made a difference. Sometimes when your offense is depressed your defense can win games. Tonight, that was the case.”  

Wolf said she felt “really pressured.”

“I was pressured when we got the two goals because I knew they’d be coming right back at us,” she said.

Teson, who also plays forward, netted the Pirates’ first goal a little more than three minutes into the game. But the Bulldogs raged back and challenged the Pirates throughout the first half. Zumwalt South had five shots on goal.

St. Charles went up 2-0 in the second half with 26:11 left to play in the game courtesy of a goal from midfielder Ashley Sudbrock. Sudbrock said the second goal put more pressure on Zumwalt South.

Freshman forward Morgan Piotraschke scored the Bulldogs’ only goal with 17:16 left to play. Zumwalt South continued to challenge the Pirates throughout the rest of the contest and put four more shots on goal.

The Pirates broke a three-game losing streak with the win. Orrick also gave credit to his team’s fitness.

“We talked about it at halftime, on any given day we can run with anyone, we’re fit enough to do that,” he said. “When you play with a small squad like we do you don’t have the luxury of subbing a lot of players. We felt like with the cool temperature that we weren’t going to get zapped by the heat and we could run if we wanted to.”  

St. Charles improves to 9-3 overall and 1-3 in the Gateway Athletic Conference North with the victory. Zumwalt South drops to 10-10 overall and 1-3 in the GAC North. Fort Zumwalt South head coach Verno Gano was unavailable for comment.