Midway through the 2023 season, after coming out of its third game without a victory and a 3-1 loss to Belleville West, it was safe to say that Normal U-High girls soccer wasn't playing as good as they knew they could.
“About halfway through the season, we weren't just quite clicking,” Pioneers head coach Hayley Sefton said. “Like you can see like glimpses, you can see we play really, really well and then we [don’t] play quite as well and it could be all in the same game within like a few minutes of each other.”
The very next day at practice, Sefton did something she hadn’t done in her 15 seasons with Normal U-High.
Sefton went into the woods and gathered some sticks.