New Richmond girls soccer starts regionals at River Falls Thursday

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The New Richmond girls soccer team will get to face their former coach in the WIAA Divison 1 playoffs.

The Tigers drew the 14th seed among the 16 teams in the Division 1 sectional tournament bracket. They will face the third seed, which happens to be River Falls. That game will be played at 5 p.m. this Thursday at River Falls. The Wildcats are coached by former New Richmond coach Charles Conley.

New Richmond enters the playoffs with a 6-11-3 overall record. The Tigers finished last week with a 6-6-3 record in Middle Border Conference games, which put them fifth in the nine-team MBC standings.

The Tigers’ only game last week ended in their third tie, a scoreless draw at Barron last Tuesday. The Tigers were scheduled to host River Falls last Thursday, but the heavy rains washed away those plans.

The game at Barron was, well, barren. Tiger coach Steven Tesar said his team was flat in the first half. So the coaches changed to a three-forward set with three midfielders and a diamond defense in the second half. It pumped up the Tiger offense, which ended the game with a 10-3 advantage in shots on goal. Tesar said there was a stretch of 15 minutes in the second half when the ball never left Barron’s end of the field.

“We dominated, we just couldn’t finish. A lot of our shots weren’t on target,” Tesar said.

The Tigers had their best scoring chance in the overtime when senior Brianna L’Allier cut loose with a hard shot, but the Spooner goalkeeper was just able to get a hand on the shot and deflect it away.

Tags: sports, tigers, soccer, prep