After suffering their first loss of the season, the Wright City Lady Wildcats responded with a win over Fulton High School last week.

Wright City (3-1) defeated Fulton High School 1-0. Junior Alex Sutter scored the lone goal of the game. She scored in the 36th minute. Freshman Paige Kirn earned an assist.

“We got it into the middle so she (Kirn) could work it out of the middle,” Wright City coach Devin Raney said. Basically, we switched fields real quick to Alex (Sutter) who is speedy up top. And she was basically able to play a ball over the top in space. And it just sat perfectly for Alex to to tee it up.”

Early in the game, Raney noticed the Fulton defense was playing really well. Fulton’s defensive line was good and covered a lot of space, Raney said. This led to Wright City making an adjustment after the first 15 minutes of the game that led to the scoring opportunity for Wright City.

“We tried to work the balls into our midfielders,” Raney said. “Our two freshmen are really good ball handlers. And really just work it in and then try to get through balls. Balls over the top weren’t working so we were trying to basically get switches and through balls up to Hannah (Kendall) and Alex (Sutter) up there. Try to give them the chance to hopefully run onto one.”

Raney said after the first half, they knew it was going to be a close game between the two teams. Although the team’s objective is always to get a couple more goals when leading by one goal in the second half, Raney said they put an emphasis on defense at the end of the second half to preserve the one goal lead.

“Especially in that last 10 (minutes), if you noticed they started getting more chances,” Raney said. “But it was because we were dropping people and collapsing and trying to basically drop one more person from the second-third down. Right there, we just can’t lose the ball in the midfield with 10 minutes left. We adjusted there in that second half of the second half.”

The win came two days after Wright City lost to St. Clair 8-0. Raney said the game was tough for the Lady Wildcats, with no substitutes and the weather conditions. They had a classroom meeting the day before the Fulton game to air grievances and talk about team morale and effort, Raney said.

“We were pretty defeated after that loss,” Raney said. “And so we had a meeting yesterday and just you know, we have to survive. We have to persist. We have to. We can’t just fold up shop and curl into a ball and let that be it. We have to find a way to come out of it. And I talked all practice yesterday and all the day about how important coming out strong is. Even if we lost this game. How we came out today would say a lot about the rest of our season. They came out firing. Even though it was a 1-0 game. Very happy with the performance today.”

Wright City’s focus after the win last week shifted to the next few games on the schedule. Raney stressed the importance of upcoming games against the St. Louis Patriots, Prinicipia and St. Charles West. The Lady Wildcats will host the St. Louis Patriots today and Prinicipia tomorrow.

Raney noted they have only played four games and are still figuring things out as they progress through the season. Raney moved Joselyn Avalosluna to wing midfielder instead of wing defender in the game against Fulton because she is a good ball carrier.

“We’re still putting people into different places,” Raney said. “It’s still early on. But I do like where we’re at right now as far as just working the ball. We’re where we were at the end of the year last year and we’re only four games in.”