Capital City ends tough week with loss in Shootout

Capital City's Kassi Loethen defends as Blue Valley Northwest's Ava Miller passes to teammate Abby Allen during Saturday morning's match in the Lady Jays Shootout at Jefferson City High School. (Tom Rackers/News Tribune)
Capital City's Kassi Loethen defends as Blue Valley Northwest's Ava Miller passes to teammate Abby Allen during Saturday morning's match in the Lady Jays Shootout at Jefferson City High School. (Tom Rackers/News Tribune)

When you look only at the results, it wasn’t the best of weeks for the Capital City Lady Cavaliers.

But the Lady Cavaliers are playing the long game after finishing 0-4 in six days against quality soccer opposition.

“You have to see this kind of quality, you don’t want to get into the postseason and think we’ve never seen this pace or this talent level or this kind of communication,” Capital City coach Travis Cairer said Saturday morning after wrapping up the week with a 3-0 loss to the Blue Valley (Kan.) Northwest Huskies in the Lady Jays Shootout at Jefferson City High School. “We’ve seen it thick and heavy during the last six days, it’s good for us.

“You want to go into the postseason and realize a team isn’t even as close in talent as the ones we’ve played this season. We’ll see if it helps us in the long run.”

The Lady Cavaliers went 0-3 in Rockwood Summit Tournament -- falling to Class 3 defending state champion Fort Zumwalt South along with Francis Howell and Rockwood Summit -- to start the week.

Things weren’t going to get any easier Saturday against Blue Valley Northwest, ranked No. 11 overall in Kansas by MaxPreps.

The Huskies had the better of the play in the first half, but the Lady Cavaliers were strong on the defensive end to send the game scoreless into intermission. Blue Valley Northwest outshot Capital City 4-1 in the opening 40 minutes.

“They had opportunities in the first half, we did a good job against keeping it from becoming anything really dangerous,” Cairer said. “We did a good job of negating some high-quality opportunities.”

At the half, Cairer stressed to his team to try to finish the tough week with a strong final half.

“We talked about how we need to go out and fight to win games like this,” he said. “We had to go and give everything we had.

“And to give up a couple like that pretty easily, it’s a little disheartening.”

The Huskies got on the board a little more than three minutes into the second half on a goal by Nastassja Garrett, then added a second goal about five minutes later to make it 2-0.

Blue Valley Northwest tallied the final goal of the contest with a little less than four minutes remaining on a goal by Alex Cowdrey after a corner kick.

“It’s a little rough because we’re a bit of a skeleton crew right now,” Cairer said.

Due to injuries to starters, Capital City only had a couple of reserves available in the game Thursday against Rockwood Summit. They had a few more Saturday and Cairer is hoping the experience will turn out to be a positive.

“We have girls who haven’t gotten a lot of minutes this year giving us a lot of minutes in the past week,” Cairer said. “When your starters, who are starters for a reason, aren’t there, it makes it tough to get things clicking.

“But getting those girls on the field against quality teams is only going to make them better and that’s good for us down the road.”

Capital City (11-7), No. 9 in the Class 3 power rankings compiled by the Missouri High School Soccer Coaches Association, is back in action Monday at home against Owensville. The varsity-only contest is scheduled for a 5:30 p.m. start.