Orem girls post upset, take over first place

OREM — The Orem girls soccer team has suddenly found itself in a place no one expected it to be.

With a 2-1 upset win over Springville on Tuesday, the Tigers have taken sole possession of first place in Region 7 and are two wins away from clinching the region title.

"Obviously this puts us in a good situation,' said Orem coach Ed Louder. "We"ve got Provo and Lehi left. Neither of those teams are teams we can look past at all. We"re just looking from one game to the next.'

Springville was the pre-season favorite and has sat at the top of the standings all year, but now will need Orem to lose another game in order to reclaim its place.

The defeat was the Red Devils" second of the season and snapped a six-game winning streak.

Springville keeper Hannah Silvey had allowed only two goals in all of region play coming into the game but was playing with an injured right let. The Tigers" attack managed to put two scores on the board in just under 20 minutes of play.

In the ninth minute, Orem pressed the ball into the penalty area and Jaime Lyons rebounded a deflected shot in the ninth minute and hit a short-range shot for the first goal.

Anne Shallenberger had the game-winner in the 18th minute, hitting a one-on-one shot on a counter-attack.

"We felt like we were playing good enough ball right now that we could compete,' said Louder. "We were playing well. We took a lot of shots on goal and I thought we played our game exactly the way we drew it up today.'

The Tigers managed to keep consistent offensive pressure for virtually all of the first half, and nearly had a third goal on a shot by Ashley Kamoe that hit the cross-bar.

Springville finally mounted a consistent attack late in the half and scored just before the whistle.

Hailey Francis made a great hustle play to win a ball close to the end line and made a cross pass to Rachel Fischer who had the easy tap-in in the 40th minute.

A stead rain slowed the pace of the game for most of the second half, and the Red Devils couldn"t finish on any of their second-half opportunities.

Karissa Henage had a 20-yard free kick deflected Francis and Crosby Joyner both missed open shots in the last ten minutes.

"We got a little helter-skelter at the end,' said Louder. "I was glad the girls were able to keep the ball out of the net.'