Junior Taylor Wert, right, has served as both a scorer and facilitator for Center Grove from the center midfield position.
Daily Journal file photo
Taylor Wert’s value on the soccer field might be better understood and appreciated if statistics were recorded in the same way as ice hockey.
In soccer, only the player whose pass directly leads to a goal is credited with an assist — but that last pass isn’t necessarily always the one that made the play happen.
Take, for example, the second goal scored by the Center Grove girls in last week’s victory at Franklin. Look at the scoring summary, and all it will tell you is that Ali Wiesmann found the back of the net off a pass from Ella DeWitt. What it won’t tell you is that a perfect lead pass from Wert to DeWitt — the type of setup widely known as the “hockey assist” — opened the door for that goal to happen.
Such plays are commonplace for Wert, a junior center midfielder who has become the primary playmaker for the unbeaten Trojans, a team ranked seventh in Class 3A with a 6-0-1 record going into tonight’s home match against Roncalli. And while the stat sheet might not always show its appreciation, Wert’s teammates and coaches do.
“She gives us a ton of openings,” Wiesmann said. “Basically, when she’s dribbling up the field, she can beat anyone off the dribble, so it gives us so many openings for lanes to score goals.”
“She’s an influential player for us,” Center Grove coach Myron Vaughn added. “She’s very creative on the ball, which allows the rest of the team, their movement, to affect the game, and the players on either side of her, with Emily (Karr) and Ella (DeWitt) and Madi (Kramer), we have a pretty dynamic front four whenever we’re going forward. She’s in a position — almost like a point guard position — in that shape, so it makes sense, and she’s embraced it and done really well with her opportunities.”
Wert has had a variety of opportunities in the past. She made an immediate splash as a freshman, scoring eight goals and contributing five assists, before taking more of a background role (two goals, six assists) on last year’s senior-dominated squad.
This fall, she’s higher up on the field again, which not only provides her more opportunities to attack (four goals through seven matches) but also puts her in better positions to create. She has three assists recorded and at least a few others that she’s helped set up secondhand.
“It’s definitely a good thing for me as far as the role I play for the team,” Wert said. “I feel like, as a 10, that’s a position where I’m trying to just play out the ball to everyone and trying to create opportunities as much for other people as I can.”
So far, it’s paying big dividends for the Trojans, who are coming off of a 5-3 road win over defending 3A state champion Homestead this past Saturday. Wert scored one of those five goals, but she also has plenty of confidence in the girls around her — whether it be Karr, DeWitt, Kramer, Wiesmann or Molly Tapak — to finish off a scoring chance that she creates.
“I’ve played with most of these girls for the majority of my life, and so I think that’s something that really helps us,” Wert said. “Our team chemistry, just how well we’ve bonded, we can work together and connect really well together.”
Those connections have enabled Center Grove to remain just as effective as they were last season, if not more so. And with Wert steering the ship and racking up hockey assists, the Trojans have to like their chances of putting a championship on ice next month.
