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When Kai Whitehill was on the field Friday, he always found himself in the right place at the right time.

His time on the sideline, that was a different matter.

The Lathrop senior forward’s head-long fall into gravel while tracking down a loose ball was the only misplay he made all night, as Whitehill’s three goals led the Malemutes to a 5-0 win over the North Pole Patriots at Allridge Field.

When a ball was launched out of bounds, Whitehill leaped over the fence surrounding the field to track it down, but didn’t quite stick the landing, falling down in the gravel.

“I hurt my side pretty bad,” Whitehill said with a slight chuckle after his teammates coaxed him into showing off his series of scratches on his right flank.

With a nose for the ball on the field, Whitehill hurt the Patriots defense just as bad.

“We’d worked on some corner kicks and placed shots, so those really worked,” he said. “Then, just quick taps past the last defender and staying onsides — just easy goals.”

For the young Patriots, it was a struggle to generate offensive chances with junior forward Dane Ebanez unable to play because of a red card in their previous game.

“Dane makes a big difference, I’m not going to lie. But there’s a lot of other things there as well,” Patriots coach Robert Martinez said. “If we didn’t get a little lazy at the end, the score would have been different. If we would have gotten a few of the early balls, with forwards moving a little bit harder, it might have been different.”

But it was the hard work of a defenseman that put Lathrop up midway through the first half.

With the ball sitting between a slew of players in the Patriots’ half of the field, Forest Chumbley decided to take charge.

The Lathrop defenseman took the ball up the right side of the penalty box and sent a crossing pass toward the left post.

Alec Hajdukovich headed the cross past Patriots goaltender Roland Barbaza, who was attempting to make a play on the ball. Hajdukovich’s header went right to Whitehill, who slammed the ball into the open net.

“Alec just had a little pop header right over the goalie and I just put it right in,” Whitehill said. “It came right to my feet.”

It was a play that never would have happened without Chumbley’s cross.

“I was expecting my other player to take (the ball), but I ended up taking it myself,” Chumbley said. “No one was looking at it, so I just took it.”

A one-goal game at halftime, Whitehill broke it open in the second half.

The forward notched his second goal of the game soon after the break, when he beat Barbaza to a crossing pass 10-feet out from the goal and just wide of the right post, heading the pass past the goalie for the score.

“It was a nice little cross, just popped the header over the goalie at the last minute,” Whitehill said.

The Patriots looked poised to answer right back when Phillip Hingst had a point-blank look at goal a minute later, but Lathrop goalie Chris Moran made a diving save on the Patriots’ best scoring opportunity all game.

After Barbaza was forced to leave the game when he was on the receiving end of a hard slide into his shin, Whitehill beat backup Phoenix Copley for his third score.

“Kai, he’s our senior starting striker. He has eight goals this year already and I’m expecting some big things out of him against West Valley tomorrow,” said Lathrop coach Sean Matheny, whose team takes on their cross-town rival at noon today at West Valley.

Logan Lyle finished off the Lathrop scoring, twice beating Copley in the closing minutes of the game.

Copley, a standout goalie for the North Pole hockey team, went out for soccer for the first time this year, and Friday marked his first time as a soccer goalie.

“Phoenix, he’s brand new. He’s a hockey goalie, but, you can flex you can bow up and cover a (hockey) net there,” Martinez said. “Twenty-four by eight (feet), it’s a little different there. But he did an OK job.”

Girls game

In the girls match, North Pole needed a chance to gel. Lathrop needed a sense of urgency.

Each team found what they were looking for in the second half, as a scoreless game turned into an offensive slugfest capped off by Katie Hovda.

Hovda’s second goal of the game proved the difference maker in the back-and-fourth affair as Lathrop claimed a 4-3 win.

“It was nice to see that we finally started playing with a sense of urgency the last 25 minutes,” Lathrop coach Danny Gibson said. “I’ve been trying to pull that out of them the last two games. Unfortunately, it took a close game to make that happen.”

After a first half played mostly in the Patriots end, Chelsea Wilkes put North Pole on the board first in the second half. Goals from Julie Gilhuly and Hovda made it a 2-1 Lathrop advantage, but Anita Halladay tied the game off a free kick just outside the penalty box, sending her strike just under the crossbar.

The Patriots were looking to find their rhythm with five starters in Anchorage for a solo ensemble performance.

“We’re just trying to get the girls we have here to gel and they started doing that in the second half,” Patriots coach Clay Clark said. “They played well, some of the girls we brought up from JV really stepped up.”

Brooke Zellweger and Wilkes traded goals to keep the game even at 3-3, before Hovda snuck behind the Patriots defense to record the game-winner with a low strike to the far corner.

“That’s exactly where you coach them to kick it,” Gibson said.

The Patriots take on Monroe at today with the boys game at 5:30 p.m. and the girls contest at 7:15, while the Malemutes face West Valley.

Wolfpack sweep

Robert Palos was very proud of his young Eielson Ravens team at halftime. They were only down two goals against West Valley.

The second half didn’t go quite as smoothly as the Wolfpack claimed a 7-0 boys soccer victory against Eielson.

The West Valley girls then completed the sweep with a 4-0 win.

“I was really happy with their performance,” Palos said. “This team is pretty new. This is the only the third time they’ve played together. We’re a very young team, that’s going to be good for the next couple of seasons.

“I knew we were the underdogs going in. They’ve got a lot of good players.”

In the girls game, the Wolfpack jumped on the board early and didn’t look back.

Malia Simpson, Katie Murphy and Melanie Hall all found the back of the net as West Valley took a 3-0 lead into halftime.

“We definitely strung some good passes together and built that team chemistry we’re looking for,” West Valley coach Greg Gibson said.

In the second half, Lynn Ross took advantage of the field’s muddy conditions to give the Wolfpack their final goal.

“The box area in front of the goal is just mud-central,” Gibson said. “Lynn was there to play the ball, but it took an unfortunate bounce off her. If the field was normal, it would have bounced away, but the mud was so thick it just stuck, and she kicked it in.”