ROCHELLE — After opening up the spring season last week against the Oregon Lady Hawks and the Mendota Lady Trojans, the Lady Hubs varsity soccer team played its first back-to-back of the year, traveling to Streator on Tuesday before returning to Rochelle on Wednesday for a conference contest against the Yorkville Lady Foxes.

STREATOR

Rochelle entered Tuesday’s nonconference game having scored three goals in its previous match against Mendota, but the Lady Hubs fell down early and were unable to recover, surrendering two first-half goals (8’ and 9’) in a 2-0 loss to the Bulldogs.

“We weren’t on our game right away,” head coach Chris Blevins said. “They moved the ball around really well and it took us a bit to figure out what their game was… Once we figured them out we didn’t let them score but we weren’t going on the attack very well.”

Sophomore Holli Drew recorded a season-high 14 saves in the game, and the first-year starter who played part-time keeper as a freshman last season has been a big reason the Lady Hubs have kept their early games close.

“She has all the potential in the world if she keeps applying herself,” Blevins said. “She has the height to be able to go up and get the ball, and she just has to keep working on her catches and so forth. Ryan [Winterton] has been working with her a lot.”

YORKVILLE

Things got a little out of hand for Rochelle on Wednesday, with a high-powered Yorkville offense coming to town and hanging four goals on the Lady Hubs in the first half. The Lady Foxes followed up with four more scores in the second half to cruise to an 8-0 victory to send the purple and white to 1-3 overall and 0-1 in conference play this season.

“They moved the ball so well and they have very strong players,” Blevins said. “They have great ball-handling skills and they were making great passes. They were dropping in their long balls on us and they always had somebody immediately touching their passes.”

The Lady Hubs have been shut out three times in four games this season, and as the girls get ready for a road game against Indian Creek on Monday, April 3, Blevins said the key to getting the team’s offense going will be improving its passing and movement up front.

“We have to get our forwards to make more diagonal runs and we need to have them time their runs for the longer balls better,” he said. “Our outside midfielders need to work their way up the sidelines a bit more so we can get more crosses in.”