Midway through the first half of Friday’s soccer game against Morris, Wilmington‘s Mayah Sanchez ran right out of one of her shoes. Then, she let everyone know, yelling, “My cleat fell off!”

She quickly ran to the bench carrying the wayward shoe, put it back on, then returned to the game. After the first half ended in a scoreless tie, Sanchez and her teammates made some more changes.

Those changes worked, as Sanchez scored off an assist from Addison Van Duyne, breaking the ice in the Wildcats’ 3-1 nonconfernce win, with 31:04 left in the game.

Less than a minute later, Wilmington’s Kailyn Motykowski scored off of a rebounded shot for a 2-0 lead with 30:09 remaining.

“I just had to put on my shoe tighter at halftime,” Sanchez said. “When we met at halftime, we realized that we had to step things up and push the action more. We started pushing and we got some good chances. Addison made a great pass to me for my goal.

“We really played hard tonight and got to a lot of 50/50 balls with our hustle. It feels good to beat a bigger school. We are a small school, but we have a tight community. I am always trying to talk girls in school to come out for soccer. Maybe if they see that we can beat a bigger school, they might want to come give it a try. The more, the merrier.”

The defense for Wilmington (3-8) - in particular Motykowski, Abby Harding, Remi Thomas, Sally Clifford, Sydney Swan and Ariana Flores - turned away Morris (3-10) at nearly every turn.

Morris got on the board with a goal by Kenzie Ahearn with 3:47 remaining. That was after Van Duyne scored with 11:56 to play for the Wildcats despite playing with a quad injury on one leg and a sore hamstring on the other.

“We definitely had an advantage being on our home field,” Van Duyne said. “We have built a lot of chemistry on this field and we have a good connection with each other.

“We have been getting better as the season goes on, and that’s what we want to keep doing. The defense was really good today. I think it’s going to be fun the rest of the year to see what we can do.”

With a touch of luck, Van Duyne could have had a hat trick. She banged one shot attempt off the crossbar and Morris freshman Tenley Justice saved a couple more shots. In all, Justice finished with nine saves, while defenders such as Sara Crisman, Lily Hansen and Stella Wright helped keep the Wilmington offense from more scoring chances.

“We were missing four starters tonight, and that hurt us,” Morris coach Steve Custer said. “Three were defenders and one was our starting goalie. This was only Tenley’s second game in goal on the varsity, and she did a really good job.

“Even though we had some starters out, we have to come out with more focus. We had way too many sloppy passes and gave the ball away too often. We need to continue to play hard like we have been. We’ll get a win and get some momentum heading into the playoffs.”