Mid-Prairie's Amara Jones leads the way in Senior Night OT win

By Douglas Miles
Posted 5/17/23

The idea took hold during girls’ basketball season.

Mid-Prairie girls’ basketball assistant coach Truman Shetler had agreed to lead the Golden Hawks’ girls’ soccer …

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Mid-Prairie's Amara Jones leads the way in Senior Night OT win

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The idea took hold during girls’ basketball season.

Mid-Prairie girls’ basketball assistant coach Truman Shetler had agreed to lead the Golden Hawks’ girls’ soccer program once spring arrived. With an eye cast towards his potential roster, Shetler decided to gauge the interest – with a sizable assist from senior Sophie Baker – of senior hoops standout Amara Jones.

“We got along pretty well, my mom says we are like the same person,” Jones said. “I knew that he was going to be coaching, so Sophie has been egging me on this whole year to go out, so I decided to do it.”

The decision has been a boon for both Jones and the Golden Hawks. Despite not playing competitively since the fifth grade, the forward has piled up a team-high 11 goals in just eight matches, including all three scores in Mid-Prairie’s 3-2, double-overtime victory over Bellevue in a River Valley Conference match Friday at the Wellman Rotary Soccer Fields.

“She’s an athlete,” Shetler said. “She is great to have out here. She is a great goal-scorer, great kid, great athlete. She works hard and it shows.”

In the regular-season finale for both schools and Mid-Prairie celebrating its “Senior Night,” Jones provided the dramatics. With the Golden Hawks less than a minute away from heading to halftime on the wrong end of a 2-1 score, the ball managed to find enough of Jones’ foot for her to punch home the equalizer with just 37 seconds left.

“It just kept bouncing, so everyone just kept trying to get shots,” Jones said. “So I was just glad that mine finally rolled right under the goalie’s hands.”

Neither team scored in the second half and the first 10-minute overtime period. Just when it appeared that the match would need penalty kicks to decide the outcome, senior midfielder Kina Miller sustained a strike to the face, composed herself and corralled the ball just long enough to deliver the second of her two assists to a streaking Jones, who drilled the game-winning goal past the Bellevue goalkeeper with 2:17 left in the second overtime.

“It was really exciting,” Jones said. “Kina gave me a perfect ball there after getting nailed in the face, so I was just happy to be able to put that one in for her and just to get that last goal in on ‘Senior Night.’ I was tired, so I was glad that it went in and we were done.”

The win also would not have been possible without the freshman heroics of goalkeeper Niva Helmuth, a Hillcrest Academy student. After surrendering two Bellevue goals in the first 34 minutes of the match, Helmuth withstood a barrage of offensive opportunities and shut out the Comets over the final 63-plus minutes.

“They had a lot of good ‘through balls’ and they are a pretty fast team and they can get to it,” Helmuth said. “Our defense did a good job keeping up with them.”

Helmuth’s 23 saves against Bellevue (4-8) are the most for an individual Mid-Prairie goalkeeper this season and equaled the 23 combined saves from Helmuth (nine) and Miller (14) the day before at Washington. It was just the seventh time all season that the Mid-Prairie goalkeepers have recorded more than 10 saves in one match.

“Niva was great in goal,” Shetler said. “She had probably a handful of just ‘reflex saves’ that were big for us and I told her that it is good to have good reflexes, because that is half of playing goalie. She played really well tonight and I am really glad that she was back there for us.”

With the victory, Mid-Prairie (10-6, 7-3 RVC) clinched fourth place in the conference and reached a double-digit win total for the third time (2019, 2021) in four seasons. The Golden Hawks managed no more than six wins in the five seasons prior to 2019.

“It is good to be able to continue to have successful seasons,” Shetler said. “Even with a first-year coach, the players come in, know what they are supposed to do and they pick up right where the last year’s team left off.”

Mid-Prairie begins postseason play at home on Wednesday with a Class 1A regional quarterfinal against Central Lee (7-5), a team that was originally on the Golden Hawks’ schedule until an April 4 rain cancellation.

If Mid-Prairie is to advance, it will have to do so without Jones, who will be representing the Golden Hawks at the state track and field meet in Des Moines that day.

“It’s going to be hard, but I think the girls can pull off the win,” Jones said. “And then I will just be pure soccer by the next game, so I am hoping that will happen.”