After three straight home games, the Wildcats got on the road to play some out of town teams. Both games took place on Saturday, April 16, and were played within two hours of each other.

The first team Millard West faced off against was Waukee. Early into the game Waukee was able to take a 2-1 lead on the Wildcats, mostly from transition goals. Following these, Millard West and Waukee went back and forth scoring goals, until freshman David Finnestad was able to grab a ground ball and tie up the game at 3-3. Coming off these goals, juniors Reef Beal and Brody Gorseth were both able to put some close looks away and pull the Wildcats ahead by two. Going into halftime, Waukee put away one more to make it a one goal game.

“On defense we were doing a good job blocking off our guys,” junior David Christensen said.  “This allowed us to play better defense by not letting people get open and take shots.

The second half of the Waukee game started out slow for Millard West as the Wildcats failed to play out on defense, allowing a far shot for a goal. This was almost immediately followed by a goal by Gorseth, but that didn’t stop the Waukee momentum, as they were able to answer right back. This put the score at 6-6 and gave Millard West heavy competition. Waukee then scored two goals off of dodges, and senior Cameron Short was able to net a quick stick for the Wildcats. Ending the third quarter were a few more goals, as the game got tied up at 9 a piece.

Taking a clear lead early in the fourth was Waukee. They held all the momentum and played fast with crisp passes, scoring three goals to Millard West’s zero. This took the game to about two minutes left, as the Wildcats started to pick up pace again. Junior Alex Warren and sophomore Reece Straley were both able to put away two goals within 20 seconds of each other and bring it back to a one goal game. Unfortunately for Millard West, Waukee held their ground and didn’t let up any more goals, to win the game.

“We didn’t do great possessing the ball,” sophomore Kaden Sellmeyer said. “We did do pretty good on clears and rides, but we need to work on getting ground balls the first time around.”

The second game was against Ankeny. 

Beal came out firing for Millard West as he had the first goal of the game, with a roll dodge. Following this, Finnestad was able to put a shot away, along with an Ankeny player scoring on a wide open possession. This made the Wildcats step up and increase the intensity of their game. They almost never gave the ball up and were able to score four more goals in just a couple minutes. Two of these shots were made by Beal and two were netted by Gorseth. This led to two more goals by Finnestad to carry over to the third quarter.

Early into the third quarter, the score was 8-2, with Millard West not giving up anything. Soon after Finnestad scored, Gorseth and senior Cameron Short were able to each score one more to give the game a score of 10-2. Following this, Millard West started to slow down a bit, as they let up two goals, but along with this, they scored four more to end the game. This stopped the clock with a 14-4 score and gave Millard West a 5-3 record.

“We didn’t play our best and the little mistakes added up for us in the end,” freshman Jack Fedde said. “We fixed some of our earlier mistakes and didn’t let off the gas against Ankeny.”

Millard West will be back in action next Wednesday against Cobra, a mix of Millard schools not including the Wildcats. They will play at home at 6 p.m.