Goals from Adey Avey (two), Eva Montes and Gaby Roberson and strong performance from defenders ensure freshman goalkeeper McKenzie Cochran’s big night doesn’t go to waste in 4-2 win at Warsaw

Tom Keegan
Onwardtrojans.com

Big, bad Butler Bulldogs recruit Lila Pepper of Warsaw towered over Chesterton’s much shorter drill sergeant of a center back Salina Ford and unleashed a powerful shot. Ford didn’t back up an inch and blocked it with her shin.
On that one play that Ford didn’t even remember after the Trojans completed a 4-2 road victory Wednesday night, she made it clear that the Trojans didn’t take a 90-minute bus ride just to spend a couple of hours outdoors on a beautiful summer night. They came to defeat a quality opponent, and that’s what they did with back-to-front intensity, a total team effort that came after falling behind, 1-0, four minutes into the contest.
Ford, fellow senior center back Alice Francher, and sophomore outside backs Gabby Roberson and Claire Sutter did terrific work in front of McKenzie Cochran and oh what a night the freshman goalkeeper had in the second game of her high school career.
Mix in a pair of goals from senior Adey Avey, one from classmate Eva Montes and the first of the night for the Trojans from Roberson and it added up to a convincing victory. Lorelai Simmons contirbuted a pair of assists to the cause.
The Trojans took a 3-1 lead in the first half, built it to 4-1 on a blistering shot from outside the box by Avey for her second goal of the night past the midway point of the second half and Pepper made it 4-2 a few minutes later when she scored her lone goal on a penalty kick.
One night after an easy season-opening 9-0 win at LaPorte, took it up a notch against a much higher level of competition. Where did all that confidence come from with so much youth in the back?
“I think a lot of the aggressiveness comes from Salina,” Sutter said. “I trust her a lot and she is always raising the intensity.”
As is common with soccer players who bring so much fire to the field, the intensity can boil over at times to the point a game official pulls out the yellow card and holds it in the air. Warsaw spectators who had called for just that to happen as it did broke into a chant of “left, right, left, right left,” as Ford walked off the field for a long stay on the sideline. She turned around, looked at them, and jerked her arms into the air, getting a rise out of the home spectators.
Ford lit a fire under teammates all night with her contagious firebrand style.
“You can tell Salina’s an emotional kid,” Chesterton coach Ben Forgey said. “She’s emotional in the way she loves her teams and her teammates, and she’s emotional in a way that this feels like life and death to her, and she embodies that. She’s willing to put her body on the line to make sure she does that and she shows this team that they can count on her to do that.”
Fancher expounded on the source of the aggressive play, saying, “I think we realized last year that we needed more spark in the back, and I think that we all work really well together, so it makes us play more confident with each other, trusting each other.”
The play at the other end of the field did not go unnoticed by the team’s most accomplished player.
“I was really proud of everyone who played a role in the back,” Avey said. “Also, I loved how we cheered really loud for every single person on the field and I feel like that really built up everyone’s confidence and made everyone want to work harder. And I think the back line, especially the center-backs, played amazing and aggressive, and even our outside backs. That’s a tough job. You have to run up all the time and they pushed past their tiredness. It was great.”
Avey’s words on the outside backers running up and down the field created a picture of Roberson, sister of Trojans star 800-meter man Will Roberson, covering so much ground. Avey rewarded her for the effort by setting her up nicely for a goal.
It takes courage for a sophomore defender to demand the ball from a highly skilled senior scorer and Roberson summoned it, and according to Avey, not meekly. If you don’t call for the ball, you’re not going to get it, so kudos to Roberson for letting her voice be heard.
“She seemed very confident when she was calling for the ball, so I was like, ‘Here you go, Gaby,’” Avey said of her first assist of the season to go with five goals in two games.
Known more for preventing goals than scoring them, Roberson described her big moment: “I ran up and I called for the ball and Adey passed me the ball and I had an open shot, so I just hit it is hard as I could and it went in.”
Avey’s first goal of the night required some quick thinking to let the magic in her right foot do the rest.
“The girl who had the ball, she’s really fast, and I thought that if I just poked it away from her I could have a 1 v. 1 with the keeper, and I slotted it in,” Avey said.
A team that attacks as aggressively as the Tigers wasn’t about to retreat just because it trailed 3-1 at the half. They found a way to get the ball through the defense more in the second half and yet, thanks to Cochran’s bold, skillful attacking of her own, the only time Warsaw scored after halftime came on a Pepper penalty kick. (Say that real fast 10 times while picking a peck of pickled peppers.)
Cochran repeatedly rushed out of the box to snag the ball in the nick of time to stymie serious threats.
“Oh my gosh, you couldn’t even tell she was a freshman,” Avey said. “She had so much confidence and her screaming for the ball, her coming out of the box, it was just great, and that’s a huge role to play as a freshman, so she did amazing. I was pumped. She runs out of the box and screams for the ball. I was confident she was going to get it.”
Cochran explained her motivation, saying, “Our whole defensive line is older than me and our center-backs are seniors, so I know I have to step up my game when I’m playing with them and not let them down.”
More than not letting them down, she impressed them. Big-time. Her new coach as well.
“Against a team like this to come out with a win as a freshman, imagine what that’s going to do to make her even more confident,” Forgey said. “What a great performance it was. We know she’s got quality, but she’s new to playing kids three years older than her, sometimes Division I kids. Playing at this level, we’ve talked about projecting confidence.”
Cochran followed that advice.
Up until now I talked to her about how she kind of sounds like she’s asking a question. But I want her giving her an answer and telling us exactly what she’s doing. And tonight you heard her commanding the box so much more than she has yet,” Forgey said.
Given how quickly Warsaw scored on a rebound shot, it was obvious the freshman was about to undergo a tough test.
“This was the way you want to play games. You’ve got a super aggressive, athletic with a decent amount of quality team on the other side and we know we’ve got quality and we haven’t been tested yet to see if we can stand up to it,” Forgey said. “The way these guys came out and started the game, they scored four minutes into the game, and you’re thinking it could be more the way they’re coming, but ours said, ‘Not so fast. Let’s answer.’ And we got a goal two minutes later. It’s early in the season, so we don’t know where teams will go but there is a lot to this team we just played, but I saw a lot in the team we’ve got too.”
Warsaw obviously made slowing Avey a priority. The No. 7 filled the air more frequently than at a crowded craps table, the goalie constantly reminding teammates to “watch 7, 7, 7, 7.”
“They tried to stop her any way they can, sometimes legally, sometimes not, and she still found a way,” Forgey said.
They slowed Avey early in the game, forcing her to turn it over a few times in the middle of the field, but she eventually found space and when that happens she tends to find the back of the net.
Chesterton 9, LaPorte 0: The Trojans opened on the road and had no trouble putting away the Slicers on Tuesday night.
Avey scored three goals, Montes two and Claire Vrahoretis, Campbell Gingrich, Lorelai Simmons and Lily Duracz one apeice. Vrahoretis added three assists. Cochran was in goal the first half and Natalie Peters the second.