CL girls soccer team ends regular season with a shut-out against IF-A

The Clear Lake girls soccer team finished the regular season with a shut-out win at Iowa Falls-Alden Thursday, May 29.
Iowa Falls played a heavy defensive game, which played right into the hands of the Lions. The Cadets kept a line of four defenders back and three mid-fielders back most of the game, hoping to keep the Lions away from the goal. 

  Clear Lake’s defense did a good job of protecting goal keeper Ellie Biebesheimer.  The Cadets rarely took a shot on goal and none were close to score.
With IF-A stacked back in the box, it was difficult to do too much maneuvering in the box, but Logan Anderson did manage to squeeze around a couple defenders and sneak a shot past the goalie in the 16th minute. 
The Lions continued to put the pressure on IF-A and had several shots, but no more scoring the first half.  Clear Lake also experimented with its lineup, moving Anderson to Emily Phalen’s spot and Brie Wagler in for Katie Hewett, moving Madi Faber up to forward for a short time.
In the second half Clear Lake used a three-forward lineup (Faber, Ivy Hogg and Anderson), figuring with IF-A leaving seven people back on defense the extra body up front would help. The three mid-fielders (Phalen, Kaye Faber and Bailey Kibsgaard) were given the extra pressure of helping on defense. On several occasions the Lions demonstrated beautiful passing between the mids and forwards and were able to push the ball down into the corner.  This opened up the middle just enough to allow the Lions to get several shots off. 
There weren’t any true ‘assists,’ but after some good triangle passing between Kibsgaard, Phalen and Anderson, the ball was pushed down to the corner where Kibsgaard crossed it and eventually Anderson was able to put the ball in five minutes into the second half.
  With IF-A dropping so many players, the Lions were able to control the middle so the ball was again kept on Clear Lake’s offensive half much of the game.  With 14 minutes left, Erin O’Tool made a nice corner kick right into the middle, in front of the goal.  After bouncing around loose, Phalen was in position to knock in the team’s third and final goal.