Ryan Murken

Your Prep Sports

IOWA CITY – Morgan Miller doesn’t have extensive soccer experience.

Prior to this spring the entire soccer career for Morgan was condensed to elementary school.

“I played kickers when I was little and that’s really all I’ve played,” Miller said. “I went out this year to play with my friends and have fun.”

Miller may not have a deep soccer background but the all-time leading scorer for the basketball program knows how to get out of a scoring slump.

Keep shooting.

That mindset helped Miller and the Regals pick up a win over Monticello on Monday.

Miller scored four goals following a slow start as Regina rolled to a 5-0 win over Monticello on a sunny evening at Regal Field.

“At the beginning I felt like we weren’t playing as intense as we usually do,” Miller said. “Our coaches just kept telling us to keep shooting and look for different spots on the goal and they will fall eventually.”

Senior Alli Brandt added a goal as Regina put up a season-high five goals while racking up 54 shots and 17 corner kicks.

The win stopped a two-match stretch without a victory for Regina and improved the Regals to 3-1-1 on the season.

“At halftime we really amped our energy up,” Brandt said. “We stayed composed and got those connections and the passes and worked together to get the shots off.”

Regina controlled the match from the outset however the Regals couldn’t get on the scoreboard early on despite numerous attempts.

The opening 28 minutes featured 23 Regina shots, five corner kicks and 12 saves by Monticello junior keeper Sam Ruchti.

Miller had her share of missed opportunities as Regina went scoreless for better than 28 minutes to open the game.

“It’s a similar mindset (to basketball) that you have to keep shooting and some days you just have an off day and that’s how it is it’s nothing that you are doing wrong its just sometimes shots just aren’t going in and you have to keep shooting them until they fall,” Miller said. “You can’t make any shots if you don’t shoot them and that’s what our coaches tell us.”

Miller finally got Regina on the board when she snuck in a shot from the left side of the box with 11:18 to play in the opening half.

That was just the start for Miller who added a second goal less than a minute later.

“What I was pleased with is we’ve been talking to them about you have to shoot the ball, you have to take the shots, you have to shoot the ball and they did do that,” Regina coach Anne Larew said. “We kept taking the shots.”

Regina led 2-0 at the half and quickly added to the lead in the second half.

Miller scored a pair of goals in the opening 17 minutes of the second half to push the lead to 4-0.

Brandt put the finishing touches on the scoring with a goal with 11:06 remaining.

“We stayed composed as a team and worked through a little adversity early,” Brandt said. “We played as a team, we waited for the opportunity to get the right shot and eventually the goals came.”

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