“Sorry!” she yelled to her Falcon teammates.

About five seconds later, the ball was back at her feet. Last season’s county Player of the Year took one dribble to get the angle she wanted and drilled an unstoppable shot high into the corner of the net.

“My corner kick was bad,”Hendrickson said. “That’s OK. I came back.”

Hendrickson finished with two goals, Lauren Duffy added two more and JessicaMatthews scored in the second half to give West Rowan a 5-0 win over visiting East Rowan. Monday night’s victory was the Falcons’ first in the 3ASouth Piedmont Conference and came on the heels of two disappointing losses last week.

One of the main reasons the Falcons sit 3-3 overall and 1-2 in the league is that Rebecca Snider’s squad is just now at full strength. The girls basketball team made a run to the Western regionals, keeping Kari Schenk, Sara Pieper, Kristen McNeely and Amy Honeycutt in hightops instead of cleats.

That led to a disappointing first-round exit from the Rowan County Soccer Tournament and consecutive home losses to SPCfront-runners Harding and Sun Valley last week.

“This was the first game we had everybody back,”Hendrickson said. “It helped a lot. We played together as a team. The last game we had no subs.”

Schenk was back in her familiar midfielder spot Monday, jump-starting the West offense at every turn. And with Pieper in goal and McNeely and Honeycutt turning away East’s attackers, the Falcons cruised.

“It was difficult when the basketball players came in,”Snider said. “We were a little out of sync. Kari had a good game tonight. She was everywhere.”

West misfired on its first four shots before Hendrickson’s goal in the 20th minute.

The Falcons kept up the attack. Duffy took a long pass from Hendrickson and worked her way toward the goal only to be stopped by East’s Carrie Goodnight. AsDuffy and Goodnight fought for control, the Mustangs’ defender was called for a tripping foul at the top of the box and Duffy converted the penalty kick with 13 minutes to play in the half.

East keeper Sarah Ivey came up with several great saves over the next 10 minutes as the Falcons peppered the goal. “Their keeper was good,” Snider said. “She kept them in it.”

But Duffy and Hendrickson struck again just before halftime. In the 37th minute, Duffy centered a ball deep in the goal box that Hendrickson headed into the right corner of the net.

“I can kick ’em and she can finish ’em,”Duffy said. “We had a great game, we were working together tonight.”

Less than two minutes later, Duffy finished one of her own, bouncing a hard shot off Ivey’s hands that trickled into the net for a 4-0 lead.

“It was hard to stop their combo when we fed the ball into the center,”East head coach Jon Heidrick said. “The first 30 minutes of the game they played how I like to see them play. In the last 10-15 minutes, they let the ball go inside, and when you do that the other team just tees it up and shoots the ball.”