Game 2 - Washington

Pekin came up just short in a 2-1 non-conference loss to Washington at Coal Miner's Park. Freshman Michelle Rhoades and sophomore Tori Pfordresher scored the Panthers' two goals, he latter early in the second half which turned out to be the winner. Later in the second half, Aimee St. Andre broke through the Washington defense and found Sam Grimes, who knocked in Pekin's first goal of the year. "I can't say enough about the intensity our team played with," Pekin coach Edgar Sandoval said. "They maintained the energy for 80 minutes, and hope we can build on this going into our game against Central." Pekin hosts the Lions at Coal Miners Park at 4:30 p.m. Tuesday.

JV played first and they were handled fairly easily. Washington had slaughtered us in the past, so it didn’t look promising. On the bright side for us, their all-time leading scorer, one of the top players in the area the previous four years graduated, but they clearly had some skilled players with club background. My plan was to mark one of their players who had scored 3 vs. IVC, a team I thought to be similar to ours. And it worked. She didn’t score. They scored on a beautiful free kick by Michelle Rhodes that was just under the cross bar. Aimee St. Andre scored on a great pass from Sam Grimes, but despite several chances after that, we were unable to tie the game. Still after losing to them 6-0, 6-0 and 9-1 the previous three years, this was a huge improvement and gave me a lot of hope for the rest of the season.