By Joseph Krum
Staff Writer
@joseph_krum

Tonight at Arlington Martin High School, the undefeated Cowgirls soccer team will face up against Duncanville in the first playoff game of the year.

The Panthers (5-8-2) will try and disrupt the Cowgirls pretty-perfect record (21-0-3) at 5:30, in a game that is much anticipated to start a hopeful deep Coppell playoff run.

Senior forward Sarah King leads the team in scoring with 23 goals and also has 16 assists to power the Cowgirls 14th best offense in public schools with 3.8 goals per game. Freshman McKenzie McFarland also has 12 goals and 14 assists on the season.

With Coppell only allowing 0.3 goals per game according to MaxPreps, allowing too many goals might not be a problem for the Cowgirls. Yet soccer coach Chad Stricker knows what the team needs to do to win.

“We need to start fast. They have a really good goal keeper, so we have to get really good shots on her by just getting traffic in front of her,” Stricker said. “We have to be deceptive with our shots, and we also need to shut them down since they are so athletic. We need to play smart, communicate a lot, and just finish by the goal.”

With Coppell beating Southlake Carroll 2-1 once this season and tying them 0-0, the Cowgirls are expected to have good game tonight considering Duncanville lost to Southlake Carroll with a score of 5-1.

“We already know what the road is like going to state, so we just need to take care of business in the first round,” Stricker said. “We will play the winner of Plano West/Denton Ryan if we get to the next round, so it’s hard not to think about the next round, but we just need to focus on winning this game first.”