Hazelwood West Loses District Soccer Crown to Pattonville

It was a tough one for against in Friday's MSHSAA Class 3 District 5 girls soccer championship game.

"One of our gameplans was to get after (the Wildcats) early," Pattonville head coach Tom Iffrig said. "Even at the beginning of the game, our goal was to score in the first five minutes.

"With us beating them the first time around, we thought if we scored early, it's going to kind of break their back."

That plan sure worked well, as West could hardly get anything going at all offensively against the Pattonville Pirates; especially with the team's goal scoring dynamo Kailey Utley. She admitted she sometimes uses an unusual tactic when she makes her move toward the opposing goal.

"Sometimes I close my eyes, and the ball just goes in," is what Utley told teammates who were congratulating her after she scored for the third time in the Pirates district title game showdown against rival Hazelwood West, at the Lou Fusz Soccer Complex.

The other Pattonville players laughed when Utley said that, and it's a pretty good bet that she was just joking.

But if that statement were true, shooting with her eyes closed was effective for Utley, Pattonville's all-time goal scorer, who delivered in a big way once again for the Pirates, with three goals in the 5-0 Pattonville victory over the West. You could say the team was overheated and overmatched.

Once the Wildcats tried even harder to mount a comeback, they quickly ran out of energy, during a surprisingly warm 95-degree day in late May.

"We work hard to try to score the first goal," West head coach Jason Sellers said. "But when we don't, the other team gets to dictate play, and that's what happened today.

"It's hard in this game to come back against anybody, but it was especially hard against a really well-coached team like Pattonville."

Utley, who will be playing college soccer at the University of West Virginia next fall, showed off her speed and broke to a free ball just outside the Hazelwood West net.

She then ripped a shot past West goalkeeper Alex Linck at the 10-minute mark to make the score 1-0.

After teammate Kimberly Hulse buried a free kick past Linck to make the score 2-0 at the 14-minute mark, Utley lifted a centering pass toward the Wildcat net in the 18th minute, that West defender Samantha Holland couldn't clear. 

Holland's pass attempt wound up as an own goal, with Utley credited for the score that made it 3-0 Pirates.

In the end, the Pirates won 5-0 over the Wildcats.

Hazelwood West, which finished second to Pattonville in the Suburban North Conference and in districts for the second straight year, ended the season with a 14-9 record.