State-ranked Pella edges Newton girls in regional semifinals

The Newton girls soccer team outplayed its rival Pella for the first half of the opening half of the Class 2A Region 3 semifinal matchup on Wednesday.

But the Cardinals were unable to grab momentum with an early goal. That allowed the 2A No. 13 Lady Dutch to remain even with their visitors and Pella eventually put a ball past Newton keeper Addy Cibula in the second half during a 1-0 postseason win.

“I’m super happy with the way we played,” Newton head girls soccer coach Susan Altemeier said. “Pella thinks that we’re going to come here and they will dominate us. I told my girls we can compete with them. We’ve been improving game by game by game, and they gave a heck of an effort here.”

Newton had a 29-11 disadvantage in shots and Pella’s surplus in shots on goal was 17-7.

But the first 20 minutes produced a much closer contest, and the Cardinals (9-6-3) took more corner kicks (5-3) in the match.

The match was scoreless at halftime, but Pella’s Sarah Hardman scored the only goal of the match in the 48th minute. It was Hardman’s fifth goal of the season.

“It was an unfortunate bounce over our goalie’s head,” Altemeier said. “And it came off a penalty. We had some tough calls, but it is what it is.

“Somebody has to lose and unfortunately it was us. But it was 1-0. I will take that any day of the week.”

Cibula made 19 saves for the Cardinals. She currently ranks 13th in 2A with 150 saves and ended the season with a save percentage of 82.4.

Newton suffered five shut out losses this spring and dropped two 1-0 matches to a pair of conference foes.

Pella (6-8-2) advanced to the regional championship match where it defeated No. 3 North Polk, 2-0, on Friday to advance to state.

The Cardinals lose seniors Alex Garvis, Delaney Woollums, Abby Chance, Zoey Henry and Riley Plowman to graduation.

“I’m proud of the seniors,” Altemeier said. “They worked hard the four years they were here and were great assets to this team.

“All in all, we did a really good job. It just didn’t end in our favor this time. I’m super proud of them though.”