Greg Bates, Leader Correspondent
The West De Pere girls soccer team is showing why it is pulling away in the Bay Conference standings.
For the second time this season, the Phantoms scored a double-digit victory over Shawano. West De Pere tallied five goals in the first 16 minutes of the game en route to an 11-0 victory at Shawano on Thursday.
West De Pere is now 4-0 in conference, while Shawano falls to 2-2.
“They’ve just got a solid team,” Shawano coach Bob Croschere said. “They’ve got a couple nice players and they’ve got a solid team around them.
“It’s not like I expected it to be this again.”
West De Pere (8-2) beat Shawano 10-0 on April 10. This is the fifth time this season the Phantoms have beaten a team by 10 or more goals. West De Pere’s only two losses this year are to Kimberly and Bay Port, which are both state-ranked in Division 1.
In the rematch of West De Pere and Shawano, which counted in the conference standings, unlike the first time the two teams played, the Phantoms had seven different players notch goals.
West De Pere is tough to stop because it’s so balanced offensively.
“It’s not one of those things you can just double on somebody and mark up on somebody the whole time, you’ve just got to try to contain the team,” Croschere said. “With some teams, that’s not easy.”
Shawano (2-3) trailed 5-0 just 15:49 into the game and didn’t get its first offensive opportunity until a free kick by Nicole Hoefs at 17:15.
“I think Shawano gave us a good fight for the 10, 15 minutes of the game and there were spurts where they were continually giving us that fight,” West De Pere coach Matt Ganzen said. “We need to make sure that we’re disciplined and collectively defending as a team.”
West De Pere was up 8-0 at halftime and scored on a penalty kick 2:19 into the second half. Phantoms midfielder/forward Angie Cortes netted the final two goals of the evening as the game ended after 60 minutes via the 10-goal mercy rule.
Shawano goalkeeper Peyton Buerman was peppered all game by crashing West De Pere players. She came up with a few big saves in net.
The Hawks have a few days between games and will try to get in the win column when it plays Luxemburg-Casco on Saturday.
“We’ve got some film, we can try to find some holes in what we’re doing and figure out some stuff from there,” Croschere said.
Croschere knows there are plenty of areas to shore up before playoffs get underway on May 31.
“We try to build throughout the season,” Croschere said. “There are things we can learn from every single one of them and hopefully by the end we have some stuff figured out.”