PCM girls soccer cruises past rival Raiders

MONROE — It was a long road back for Jessica Albright. The Colfax-Mingo junior suffered a knee injury in the fall and had to miss the first part of the Tigerhawks’ track season and the Prairie City-Monroe’s soccer season.

Having been cleared a few weeks back, Albright is making the most of what time she has left this season with both teams.

Friday on PCM’s home pitch, Albright scored a goal and had an assist in the Mustangs’ 4-1 soccer win over Collins-Maxwell/Baxter.

And Albright is finally starting to feel like the injury is in her rear-view mirror.

“It’s been tough,” Albright said. “There have been a lot obstacles and I am getting used to it. I am not as afraid as I was when I first came back. Most of it was in my head and just being scared that someone might fall back into me. But hopefully there are a few more goals coming this season.”

PCM needed a bounce-back effort after what coach Bill Sowder called a disappointing effort against Ballard on Tuesday.

The Mustangs lost that game 7-2 but dominated play against the Raiders on Friday.

“After the last game, we came down on them pretty hard,” Sowder said. “We worked on some controlling stuff and we demonstrated that in the game and were more aggressive, too. We also won a lot of balls, which are two important ingredients to winning a game.

“I was very pleased with the performance (Friday).”

PCM got a goal 9 minutes into Friday’s match by Aranda Woods and cruised from there.

Albright’s centering pass to the middle of the field almost 17 minutes later set up McKinzie Tjaden in front of the net and the junior put it past CMB goalkeeper Lexi Breon to make it 2-0.

The goal came 30 seconds after Breon preserved a 1-0 deficit with a big save in front of the net on a Kennah Walters shot attempt.

Breon, who missed Thursday’s 10-0 loss to North Polk due to a leg injury, did not start Friday but played the final 60 minutes and again had to work through the leg injury and a struggling offense.

PCM (4-8,1-1) outshot the Raiders 30-8 in the match.

“We’re learning a new system,” CMB coach Gary Cummings said. “The kids gave a good effort. They know where the ball needs to go, but we need to just keep working to get better.”

Albright’s goal came 4:30 into the second half. She sent a shot from 25 yards out that went over Breon’s head, clipped the left post and bounced in.

Walters later made it 4-0 with a nice individual effort with 26:47 to play.

“They were a lot more focused today and controlled the ball better, which made a big difference,” Sowder said.

The best news of the night for CMB came with just less than 13 minutes to play.

Having not scored a goal yet this year, the Raiders ended that drought when Emily Coughenour took advantage of a charging McKeely Tjaden and sent the ball into the back of the empty net.

McKeely Tjaden, a freshman, wasn’t challenged much the rest of the night and she earned the win in goal. Breon took the loss despite making 15 saves.

“It shows them that it’s possible,” Cummings said of the Raiders’ first goal of the season. “We saw the keeper was coming out on a lot of balls so we told them at halftime that we wanted to make sure that we were shooting it to the net when that happened. That’s what Emily did.”

CMB (0-6. 0-4) hosts Class 1A No. 1 Nevada at 5:30 p.m. Monday. The Mustangs travel to Gilbert for a 5:30 p.m. match on Tuesday.