Niles wins battle between top area teams, down Poland, 5-1
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NILES -- Winning has become a common occurrence for the Niles girls soccer program.
And when Poland came to town on Monday, there was little the Bulldogs could do to slow the Red Dragons down.
The Red Dragons got a hat trick from Maddie Yost, and they won 5-1 at Bo Rein Stadium. And with the win, Niles hasn't lost a regular season game in its last 34 outings.
Niles was ahead by a couple goals to start the second half, but two early goals after play resumed pushed the match out of reach.
"We had to get (scores) in the first 10 to 15 (minutes)," Niles head coach Scott MacMillan said. "We missed opportunities - we shot to the keeper right off the bat and some other opportunities. We just were not playing well. The problem is this is our second game. A lot of teams already have three, four games in."
After 10 minutes of scoreless play, the Red Dragons (2-0, 1-0 Northeast 8) got on the board first.
Yost got a shot on goal, but it was stopped. The rebound trickled to the right, and the senior captain followed up with an uncontested shot.
Seven minutes later, Yost duplicated her success. Her first shot was blocked, but the ball slipped toward the middle for a second-chance goal.
"In practice, (MacMillan) always talks about how goals always start from the back line," Yost said. "It starts from the defense, then the defense plays into the midfield and then it goes up top. We've really been working on that and combining off the ball, rather than just kicking it up."
The Bulldogs (2-1, 1-1 NE8) cut it to 2-1 just 18 seconds later when Eliana Lloyd scored from just feet away from the goal. However, she was injured on the play with 22 minutes left in the half and did not return.
"I told them, 'Let's just play for Ellie,' but we just couldn't get it done tonight," Poland head coach Melisa Kopanic said. "But I do think the momentum was brought down a little bit. There's not much you can do. You lose a player, you got to put someone else in. That's that."
There was 10 when Kherington Stanford got behind the defense and scored in the bottom-left corner to extend Niles' lead to 3-1.
The Red Dragons added to their lead less than four minutes into the second half. Stanford tracked down a loose ball and fought through a defender and the cheating goalie to deposit the ball in the bottom-right corner.
From there, the Niles defense began to limit high-danger chances. Poland had a couple opportunities to score in the second half, but there weren't enough to generate any momentum.
"We played Niles' game," Kopanic said. "They didn't want us to go down the line, that's exactly what they scouted us at Howland. They didn't let us do it, and I think that was the difference right there."
Yost completed the hat trick when she converted a penalty shot with 32:17 left to play, pushing the Niles lead to 5-1.
Niles had its first undefeated regular season in program history last year. With two wins already under its belt so far in 2026, the program looks to continue its winning ways throughout the fall.
"Every day, they have to understand that they have to work hard for the next," MacMillan said. "We set goals, certain things like anybody - a conference, a district, a regional, go to state. Everybody's got those goals. We count one by one. Every game is one at a time. That's how we focus.
"That way we don't look ahead. We keep putting them together."