WNCC women shut out Western Wyoming, men fall in double overtime

Western Nebraska Community College’s Amanda Arrant is starting to hit full stride for the women’s soccer team.

Wednesday, the sophomore from Hooper, Utah, turned in a hat trick to help the Cougar women remain unbeaten with a dominating performance against Western Wyoming Community College Wednesday on the road with a 10-0 win.

The Cougar men, playing short-handed as starters Eloy Matos and Steven Estrada are back in Puerto Rico, fell 4-3 in double overtime. WNCC coach Todd Rasnic said his men’s team dominated play despite falling short on the scoreboard.

“We had the ball 70 percent of the game. We hit the cross bar about 14 times,” WNCC coach Todd Rasnic said. “They had a great keeper who made a lot of great saves against us. We couldn’t get too much by him. There were some quality shots taken on him and he came up to the challenge and saved a bunch of them.”

The Cougar men jumped out to a 2-0 halftime lead as Renato Segalla netted the first goal at the 43^rd minute. A minute later, Segalla delivered a pass to Morgan Wall as the Alliance freshman put WNCC up 2-0.

Western Wyoming sliced the lead in half at the 54^th minute, only to see the Cougars grab a 3-1 lead as Edwin Enriquez scored in the 57^th minute. The Mustangs bounced back tying the match in the 70^th minute to force overtime.

Neither team scored in the first overtime. Western Wyoming finally broke the ice in the second 10-minute period, scoring with 2:15 left in the period for the win.

WNCC outshot the Mustangs 14-8 and had 15 corner kicks to their nine.

Rasnic said they felt the difference without Matos and Estrada not in the lineup. Both are training with the Puerto Rico national team for a match against Cuba next week with the winner qualifying for the Beijing Olympics.

“We felt that today and two of the goals they scored on us were on throw-ins,” Rasnic said. “They through the ball in across the middle and scored on the tosses.”

While the men’s team fell on hard times, the women’s team continued their torrid scoring spree. The Cougars have now scored 25 goals in their last three matches. Wednesday, the team notched another 10 goals.

WNCC grabbed a 2-0 lead at halftime. Bre Perkes scored the first goal off an assist by Kiwi Wingert at the 11^th minutes. Wingert netted the second goal off a pass from Ashley Quintana.

The Cougar opened up the match in the second half scoring eight more goals, including the hat trick by Arrant late in the game.

First, though, LeAnna Paxton started the goal-scoring spree with an unassisted shot. Perkes then netted her second goal of the match off passes by Tamika Smith and Wingert for a 4-0 lead.

Smith notched back-to-back goals to push the lead to 6-0. Quintana assisted Smith on the first goal, with Wingert and Nancy Boyack getting assists on the second goal.

Arrant then scored three straight goals. The first goals came off of passes from Andrea Ardito. Wingert assisted on the third goal.

Paxton finished off the scoring with an unassisted goal for the 10-0 lead, which pushes the team’s record to 3-0-1 on the season heading into Saturday’s home-opener for the women’s team.

“I thought we put a pretty weak effort onto the field in the first half,” Rasnic said about the women’s team, who were playing their first game in over 10 days. “At halftime we had a discussion of what we need to change. We made some adjustments on the field and we started to open up the game.”

The Cougars’ offense continues to get better each match and Rasnic said Arrant is playing well.

“Amanda had three goals and she was telling me she had a hat trick,” he said. “She has stepped up this season a lot more then last year. She did a lot of extra work in the off season and it is certainly showing of how she is playing this year.”

The Cougar women out shot Western Wyoming 29-1, and the Mustangs goalkeeper finished with 19 saves.

“When you are playing a weaker opponent, it sometimes takes a while to break their defense down,” Rasnic said. “These ladies are pretty smart. They will break it down by halftime and then come back out and destroy them.”

Both teams will return to action Saturday when they face Barton County Community College at the Lander’s Soccer Complex. Action begins at noon with the men’s contest.

“The Barton County tie (on Aug. 25 for the women) is about like the game we just got done playing with the men. We absolutely dominated play in that game against Barton and ended up tying them,” he said. “I expect the ladies will be interested in showing everybody that they can beat Barton. I think the men’s team will bounce back as well.”