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Plant Still Confident

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By JARRETT GUTHRIE

Tribune correspondent

Published: January 20, 2009

TAMPA - Going into last season's Class 5A-District 10 title game, the Plant High girls soccer team was undefeated (14-0-4) a No. 1 seed and facing a Hillsborough team that had sent the Panthers home with a runner-up trophy for two straight seasons.

Plant teemed with confidence and dominated the match in almost every phase. Everything but the thing that mattered most as the Panthers lost to the Terriers for the third consecutive year, 1-0.

This season, the 15-1-1 Panthers don't lack any confidence - success in the regular season and some big-time matches (a season split against Bloomingdale, two wins against Newsome and a tie against undefeated Fort Lauderdale Cardinal Gibbons) has seen to that.

However this season, Plant has two big differences: First, allowing confidence to show but not looking too far ahead and second, a balanced offense that justifies its confidence. Plant opens 5A-10 play Wednesday at Leto at 8 p.m. against today's winner between Robinson and Leto.

"The difference this year is we actually have an offense," Panthers coach Stephen McGill said. "It's not like we didn't have anything last year but now we have multiple weapons up top."

Last year, Plant's defense - anchored by its only senior, Chelsea Hearne - was a force, but an offense set up by midfielder Lexi Rakestraw struggled to score. This was never more apparent than in the 1-0 loss to Hillsborough, where the Panthers had 20 more shots on goal than the Terriers.

"We won't let that happen again," McGill said. "Not this team."

Plant again has a tough defense led by senior fullbacks Megan Fate and Arielle Pask - a defense that has allowed only eight goals this season and has 17 shutouts.

The offense is still pushed through Rakestraw in the midfield but is loaded up top with weapons for her to find as the offense has, according to McGill, become a real identity for the Panthers. Forwards Ellen Moore, Connor Zwetsch and Molly Ganther have provided depth to the offense and contributed 24 of the Panthers' 56 goals this season.

"Lexi has always set things up well for us," McGill said. "And now with Molly, Connor, Ellen together, Lexi can set things up and those girls can knock them down."

But still the identity of this team has been putting away its end of the season from last year and McGill says the team is going to look only one game at a time for the postseason.

"Last year for the first time was different, we believed we could win and didn't," McGill said. "Now, we've beaten the Bloomingdales, the Newsomes, we've beaten the teams of that higher caliber. We are one of them now and there is not a team we don't think we can beat."

His team echoes McGill's confidence but is wary of looking too far ahead.

"We kind of got a little full of ourselves," Pask said. "This year we aren't going to look ahead."

And a district championship is the first step to exorcising last season's demons.

"They are talking about that not happening again," McGill said. "It left an incredibly bad taste in their mouths last year - in all of our mouths."

And Plant is hoping to show this week, it isn't a team ready to come up just short.

"It's not the same team from last year," McGill said. "We just are not that team."

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