Ripon Tiger girls’ soccer team pulls off upset of FVL behind Bauman’s hat trick; will face Notre Dame for regional title | Sports

The Ripon High School Tiger girls’ soccer team had never won a regional semifinal game.

It also had never defeated the Fox Valley Lutheran (FVL) Foxes before.

The No. 10-seeded Tigers changed both of those statements Thursday as they upsetted the No. 7-seeded Foxes 3-2 to advance to the regional championship game for the first time in school history. They now will play No. 2 seed Notre Dame Academy, which is ranked No. 4 in Division 2, today (Saturday) at 4 p.m. for the regional title.

“It’s awesome,” Ripon head coach Steve Nankervis said of accomplishing the two feats. “… It’s always good to be the school that’s predominantly a soccer powerhouse in our sectional and formerly in our conference before we switched conferences. It was a good win, hot win, hard win, scary win. It was all emotions kind of balled up into one.”

Powering the Tigers to the win offensively was Karsyn Bauman. The junior netted Ripon’s first-ever postseason hat trick and the sixth of her career overall, with Steve Nankervis noting that “she came to play.”

Bauman got the Tigers on the scoreboard first just before the 10th minute, when she played a cross to Ava Nankervis that just happened to bend enough to find the far post side netting. Steve Nankervis noted that had the ball not found the net, it probably would have bounced off Ava Nankervis into the goal.

The score was the only one of the first half as Ripon went into halftime up 1-0. Then, around 10 minutes into the second half, Ellie Rost won a ball in the midfield, made a couple of dribbles and played a good through ball to Bauman, who was able to beat the last defender and had a one-on-one with the goalie which she capitalized on.

Not even four minutes later, just before the 53rd minute, Bauman capped off her hat trick and she out ran a couple of FVL players for a loose ball, dribbled past two more defenders and beat the goalie again one on one.

The 3-0 lead for Ripon didn’t last long as it gave up an own goal two minutes later, when a Foxes’ attacker played a cross across the top of the box and Ari Brooks went up to head it. The junior got a head on the ball, but instead of heading it up, she headed off the side into the net as goalkeeper Hailee Scheier was going the opposite way.

FVL then put together what Steve Nankervis described as “a nice little combination play” inside of the Tigers box just before the 63rd minute to score a second goal and pull within 3-2 with around 17 minutes left in the game.

Steve Nankervis noted both teams had a couple more opportunities to score after that, with Rost having “a really nice look that she just missed wide” and the “same with Karsyn.” He said that Scheier came up “pretty big” and that all her saves were “quality saves, but nothing that was too overly challenging for her.”

“You could sense a little panic in them, trying to get shots off,” the Ripon head coach said of the Foxes. “But if someone’s taking a shot from 20-plus yards out, my money is on Hailee every time to stop most of those. And that’s what they were doing. They didn’t really get any good clean looks those last 18 minutes or so. Our defense did a really good job stepping to their attackers or their shooters. They even ended up bringing like two defenders up higher in the last five minutes or so to press us … but the girls did a really good job standing their ground and closing off their shooting lanes and not giving them anything easy … to give us that one-goal victory.”

Steve Nankervis added that FVL did out-possess the Tigers and strung more passes together then them, but that it comes down to the final number on the scoreboard and they prevailed, so “it’s really cool for the girls to have that happen for them.” He believes that the number of transitions that both teams had were about the same.

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Ripon will try to make more history today, when it travels to Green Bay to face Notre Dame Academy at 4 p.m.

Steve Nankervis knows it won’t be an easy task to pull off the upset as Notre Dame Academy is one of the best teams in the state every year and always seems to find their way to state no matter the makeup of its roster.

Notre Dame is coming off a 14-0, mercy-rule shortened win over the No. 15-seeded Wautoma/Wild Rose Hornets.

“They are a quality team,” the Ripon head coach said of the Tritons “A lot of their girls play outside the high school season; a lot of athleticism there, a lot of soccer skill. I’m looking for a competitive game like I always do. We’ve got to clean some things up that we did [against FVL] that we cannot do against Notre Dame because they will completely exploit us if we kind of fall into some of those habits. I’m optimistic. The girls have been kind of playing with a chip on their shoulder these last couple of weeks, especially after the seed meeting. We beat two teams [in Freedom and FVL] that seeded us low, so the girls are keeping that going.”

While Notre Dame actually gave Ripon a better seed at the meeting and the Tigers know they are going to have to play the best game they can to even keep it close, they are excited about the opportunity to open some eyes.

“The neat thing about it is I think everyone’s realizing that if we can pull an upset this will be history in the making,” Steve Nankervis said. “This will go down as not only a huge upset, but a first-ever for Ripon girls’ soccer to do something special. And these girls are special. They had a great season regardless of what happens, but it would just put that icing on that cake if we were to come out there with a positive result.”