Pride women's soccer to play in Heart Game of the Week at Benedictine
KANSAS CITY, Mo. - Coming down the final stretch of the 2024 regular season, the Clarke University women's soccer team will be playing in a marquee matchup in the Heart of America Athletic Conference on Friday night when they travel to Atchison, Kan. to take on Benedictine College.
Friday night's matchup between the Pride and the Ravens as been named the Heart Game of the Week and will see the teams currently in third and fourth place in the conference face off at Legacy Field on Benedictine's campus for a 5:00 p.m. CT kickoff as part of BC's Homecoming Weekend.
Clarke (10-1-3, 6-0-1 Heart) will go into the game on a five-game winning streak and a nine-game unbeaten streak as one of only two teams in the conference that has not lost in Heart play so far in 2024.
The Pride possess one of the best defensive units, allowing only six goals in 14 games so far to tie for ninth in the NAIA for the sixth-best goals per game average in the nation at 0.43 and tied for second with nine shutouts on the season.
Benedictine's (9-5-1, 6-2 Heart) defense also proved to be stout through through their first 13 games, not allowing more than a goal in any of those games but are coming off of back-to-back 3-0 losses against Missouri Valley College and MidAmerica Nazarene University.
Both teams have a deep offensive attack, boasting over 10 players who have scored a goal this season with CU having 16 players find the back of the net and the Ravens producing 12 goal scorers on the season.
The Pride's Bailey Wiemann has the most goals and points of any player in the game with nine goals and three assists on the season while Jayden Black (6 goals, 6 assists), Laryssa Pritchard (4 goals, 1 assist), and Morgan Catchur (3 goals, 5 assists) providing a lot of the supporting scoring as Black recorded two assists in Saturday's 3-0 win over Graceland and Catchur is currently on a four-game point-scoring streak, scoring a goal in three of those four games.
The Ravens have a trio of underclassmen leading their scoring efforts as sophomores Jenna Wilken and Payton Vogelbacher both have three assists with Wilken leading the team at six goals and Vogelbacher adding four goals.
The last time these two teams met at Legacy Field was on Nov. 5, 2022 in the Heart Tournament Quarterfinals when they played to a 2-2 tie through regulation and overtime to go to penalty kicks where Clarke went 4-for-4 on their PKs and the Ravens went 3-for-5.
Friday night's game can be viewed on the Heart Conference Network, which is available on the App Store and Google Play Store along with Smart TV devices like Apple TV, Roku, Amazon FireTV, and Android TV.
The direct link, through the Benedictine Raven Sports Network, to watch the game can be found here: https://heartconferencenetwork.com/benedictine-college/