Rolling along.
That term might best describe the Barton Community College women’s soccer team right now.
The Lady Cougars secured back-to-back wins and four straight without a loss on Saturday afternoon at the Barton Sports Complex with a 4-1 Kansas Jayhawk Community College Conference win over Pratt.
The win kept Barton in a tie for second in the conference and improved the Lady Cougars record to 11-1-1 over their last 13 matches. Barton is 11-3-1 overall this season after its 0-2 start to the season, and is 10-1-1 in the Jayhawk Conference. Pratt is now 2-8-1 in the conference and 3-11-1 overall.
Barton’s lone loss in conference is to 6th-ranked Butler while the Lady Cougars have tied No. 14-ranked Johnson County on the road.
The impressive run since a 0-2 start has moved the Lady Cougars into the NJCAA rankings, coming in at No. 18 this past week. Barton will close out the regular season with a trip to Garden City on Wednesday to take on the Lady Broncbusters at 6 p.m.
Barton didn’t waste much time in gaining control of the match as Mariana Poveda scored on a Bianca Barron assist just more than 10 minutes into the contest for a 1-0 lead.
That quickly moved to 2-0 in the 19th minute as Barron scored a goal of her own to make it 2-0. Katelyn James earned the assist on the Barron goal.
Barron would add a second assist to her total, this time feeding James for a goal in the final 10 minutes of the half to make it 3-0 by intermission. Ronnie Johnson also assisted on the goal.
“Our girls played well and kept possession most of the game while jumping to a 3-0 lead by halftime,” Barton head coach Aaron Avila said. “We came out and got another quick goal in the second half which frustrated our opponent.”
That goal came in the opening five minutes of the second half as Barron took an errant Pratt pass and put it passed the Pratt goalkeeper to move her into second all-time on Barton’s goal-scoring list.
With the goal Utah-native moved past Great Bend High graduate Yesenia Garcia into the second spot.
At that point, the Lady Cougars would have liked to just coast home to the win, but a three-minute stretch midway through the final half the game got a bit sloppy as both team received a pair of yellow cards and Pratt received a red card with 25 minutes still to play in the game, earning Lorna Esson an ejection for the Beavers.
“The game got a little out of hand with a couple of their players being carded and one ejected for fighting,” Avila said. “I was just glad to finish the game with a 4-1 victory and no serious injuries or ejections.”