NEW ULM โ After Olivia Enter opened the scoring for the New Ulm Eagles midway through the second half, there was no stopping her or her team.
New Ulm High School scored four straight goals, including a hat trick in the second half, to pull off a comeback win over Jordan, 4-2, in a non-conference girls soccer game Thursday at New Ulm High School.
Trailing 2-0, Enter scored her first goal of the game and season in the 60th minute to put the Eagles up 2-1. Enter’s goal came courtesy of teammate Stina Quist, whose shot was deflected and saved by Enter.
Once they got going, Enter and the Eagles had no plans to slow down.
“It took a long time,” Enter says. “And [goal] I got these little goosebumps and it just kept going and gave me more adrenaline.โ
Less than two minutes later, Enter tied the game with a second goal in the 62nd minute, receiving a cross and assist from Jessalyn Skogland from the top of the box, and then completed her hat trick in the 63rd minute with an unassisted low shot past the diving Jordan goalkeeper Taylor Elsenpeter.
It was a game New Ulm had circled on its calendar after Jordan eliminated the Eagles from the playoffs in the opening round of the Section 2AA tournament last year. Jordan won that game, 4-2, on Oct. 10, 2023, at Jordan.
“We definitely came into this game wanting to win, and we did,” Enter said.
New Ulm struggled in the first half as they faced Jordan right at the start of the 2024 season. Jordan outshot New Ulm 10-4 in the first half and took control offensively with a goal from Emma Schatz in the 16th minute and a penalty kick from Tessa Cook in the 19th minute. The penalty kick came after New Ulm goalkeeper Ellie Dake was penalized for sliding into Emerson Reichel while trying to stop the ball.
The defense kept New Ulm in the game until halftime, but head coach Jonathan Johnson said much of the first-half struggles were due to trying a new formation.
“We were working on a new formation … the younger girls did it during the summer program,” Johnson said. “But the 16-, 17- and 18-year-olds [year-olds] It was new for them so I was a bit skeptical. They looked a bit disorganised in the last 20 minutes of the first half. So we switched them back to 4-3-3. They’ve grown up in this formation so I could see they were a lot more relaxed and not as flustered about where to be and who to cover.
“Then the shooting started and when the first shot went in, you could see the frown turn into a smile. He hadn’t spoken at all in the first half and now he was actually talking again.”
Enter’s third goal gave New Ulm the lead, and Mallory Novak added another in the 69th minute to give the Eagles a 4-2 lead. Jordan only took one shot in the second half, and Dake made nine total saves for the game.
Meanwhile, New Ulm took 11 shots in the second half and finished with 15 total.
Although the first half wasn’t ideal, Enter believes the Eagles can continue the performance they showed in the second half of Thursday’s game and improve even further the rest of the season.
“I think it’s going to get better,” Enter said. “It started off a little rough, but I think it’s going to work out somewhere eventually.”
New Ulm (1-0) will play in Big South Conference play at Fairmont on Tuesday.
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