FRANKENMUTH, Mich. – Frankenmuth girls soccer coach Brad Thompson has a simple strategy for penalty kicks.
Let the players choose.
They chose correctly.
Emma Whitbrot connected on a penalty kick and used her speed to break through the defense as the Eagles remained undefeated with a 3-1 win over Hemlock on Friday.
“Unless there's a girl who's struggling, we leave the choice of penalty kick up to the players,” Thompson said. “The thing about Emma is that she's one of our most confident players.
“Every player has strengths and weaknesses. Emma's strength is speed. She can outrun people.”
The game was a non-conference matchup between two undefeated teams, with Frankenmuth improving to 7-0-2. Hemlock lost 6-1. Frankenmuth is ranked 11th in the state in Division 3.
“This year we added a historically good team to challenge ourselves before playing the top teams in the conference,” Hemlock coach Joe Wardlow said. “Watching footage of us beating a team 6-0 won't help us. We need to learn our weaknesses and show ourselves what we need to work on.
“This is what happens. We wanted to take the challenge and we were able to do it. We would have rather accepted the challenge and won, but games like this can only help us.”
Hemlock won the Division 4 district title and is looking to make it back-to-back. The Huskies led 1-0 at halftime thanks to Natalie Bojachowski's penalty kick goal.
“This is the first time we've been behind this season,” Thompson said. “That's good, because during the season you're going to be behind at halftime. We have to learn to come back. We have to go through it. Halftime We were behind and we talked about coming back.”
Witbrod's penalty goal tied the game less than two minutes into the second half. With 19:06 left in the game, Witbrodt broke through the defense and made a bully save to score the go-ahead goal.
“When they scored on the penalty kick, we went into defensive mode,” Wardlow said. “It took us 14 minutes to get control of the ball again and get out of defensive mode. That was something we talked about after the game. You'll know more about yourself, so you'll be better prepared for next time.”
Allison Peterson scored the insurance goal with less than two minutes remaining for the Eagles, who head into a week of games against a pair of Tri-Valley Conference rivals in Swan Valley and Bay City's John Glenn.
Hemlock goaltender Avery Ross made 17 saves for the Huskies, who have two important TVC games next on the schedule against Millington and Valley Lutheran.
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