The start was anything but slow.
“One of our biggest problems last year was we weren’t really clicking, high-intensity, focused during warmup,” Capital City coach Travis Cairer said Monday night after the Lady Cavaliers scored four times in the first eight-plus minutes in a 7-2 victory against the Warrenton Warriors at Capital City High School. “That led to a lot of slow and sluggish starts, so we’ve been harping about coming out of the gate firing.
“We don’t want to be put back on our heels early, that happened too much last year.”
Kaylee Loethen tallied the first two goals for the Lady Cavaliers. The senior put back a rebound off a shot by Georgia Pardalos at the 36:36 mark, then scored less than a minute later off an assist by Pardalos.
“Getting our wing backs like Kaylee into our attack is going to be a key for us this season,” Cairer said.
Pardalos scored Capital City’s third goal with 34:16 left in the first half, assisted by Brooklynn Greene. The opening flurry continued less than three minutes later when Yani Clarke scored, assisted by Pardalos.
“Last year, I thought we dominated in a lot games, but we could come out a little flat and we’d have to battle the entire game to get a win,” Cairer said. “This is a lot easier, just come out with a lot of fury, it doesn’t really matter if we score or not, we just can’t start flat.”
Gallery: Capital City Girls Soccer vs. Warrenton
Pardalos also had a foot in Capital City’s fifth goal, scoring midway through the first half off an assist by Kimber Noble.
Warrenton got on the board with about 15 minutes to go in the half off a rebound after a corner kick.
Capital City got that goal back three minutes later when Kassi Loethen scored off an assist by Mae Krause.
Warrenton (1-2) scored again with a little more than seven minutes left in the half as Capital City took a 6-2 advantage into intermission.
The Lady Cavaliers used the second half to work on some things offensively.
“We wanted to put as much as we could wide and work on some flank play,” Cairer said. “We wanted to work from the outside in, that’s something we’ve struggled with. You need game situations to work on it, you can’t do it in practice because you’re playing against players that know it is coming.”
Felicity Pendleton scored the lone goal in the second half for the Lady Cavaliers on a long liner with a little less than 10 minutes remaining.
It was a pretty good effort in Capital City’s home opener.
“We gave up a couple that we probably shouldn’t have, but I’d rather give them up in a game like this than against a lot of the teams we’re going to play,” Cairer said.
One of those games is Wednesday when Capital City opens Central Missouri Activities Conference play at home against Helias.
“It’s huge,” Cairer said. “Helias has gotten us both times we’ve played them in close games that could have gone either way.”
Capital City (2-0) is the defending CMAC champion. It’s only conference loss last year came to Helias.
“We want to repeat and that starts Wednesday night,” Cairer said. “We have to be ready to play, that’s for sure.”
In the JV game limited to one half Monday night, Capital City blanked Warrenton 6-0.