Lady Dogies corralled by Warriors

The Lady Dogies began round two of conference play Friday as they headed over the mountain for a rematch against the Lady Warriors of Worland. In the first meeting between the two teams, Worland came in ranked second in 3A and went home with a hard-fought 6-0 win. According to head coach Cami Willyard, on Friday her team didn’t seem to come to play and the now No. 3-ranked Lady Warriors cruised to an 8-0 victory.

“Worland is on a different level,” Willyard admitted. “They came in with the right mind-set, and we did not, so that didn’t make a great combination for us.”

The Lady Warriors had just come off a narrow win against the Lady Bison of Buffalo and had struggled the last couple of contests, so Willyard factored that in as motivation for Worland to play a great game against her squad.

Within the first six minutes, the Lady Warriors were able to find the back of the net twice in quick succession to take a 2-0 lead over Newcastle, then doubled the score to 5-0 by halftime.

“I think they were four for four in the first half,” Willyard said. “We didn’t even do a bad job of defending, really, but Worland was just really on point.”

“They out-possessed us, they out-talked us, they out-hustled us,” she continued. “Any aspect of the game you can think of, they did it better than we did.”

The second half got a little better for Newcastle, as they only allowed three more goals for the Warriors. At the same time, the Lady Dogies were able to muster some offensive opportunities for themselves, with Hailey Beastrom getting off three legitimate shots on goal.

“They had a pretty outstanding keeper,” Willyard said. “Two of Hailey’s shots were going in and she made great saves on both of them.”

Christine Swentesky ended the contest with six saves, Kathryn Huber had six and Victoria Pehringer denied the Warriors once.

“I was mostly concerned about our energy, or lack thereof,” Willyard said. “Worland is good, but we could have put more effort into the game. It was the first time all year that I felt like we didn’t play to our potential.”

The Lady Dogies continue the second round of conference play this week as they head to Torrington looking to go up 2-0 against the Lady Trailblazers. On Saturday, Newcastle will host the Lady Outlaws of Rawlins with kickoff scheduled for noon.

“There were some bright spots in the second half against Worland, but we really need to turn things around this week and start back on an upward trend,” Willyard said. “We are putting the Worland game in our rearview mirror and we just need to control what we can control and try to get W’s against Torrington, Rawlins and Buffalo, and hope for the best as the season wraps up.”