The Bobcats changed up their formation and picked up their first shutout of the season, 4-0 winners over Mason City at Leonard Cole Field in Marshalltown.

Aaron Ordaz Zambrano scored two goals, with one each for Carter Bell and Rafa Ortiz.

MHS (2-5) moved to a 4-3-3 formation from a 4-4-2.

“It strengthens our midfield which just makes us better as a team,” said Bell, one of the team’s captains. “We pass it so much better than previous games like Tuesday[‘s loss to Des Moines Roosevelt], we just worked way better as a team touching the ball and taking our shots.”

T-R PHOTO BY JAKE RYDER - Marshalltown sophomore forward Aaron Ordaz Zambrano (10) scores his second goal of the match during Friday’s soccer game against Fort Dodge at Leonard Cole Field.

Bell moved from the defense to the top of the Bobcat offense and struck first with a blast off the Mason City keeper’s gloves and a 1-0 lead eight minutes in.

Zambrano added his first goal 10 minutes later and the 2-0 advantage held at the halftime whistle.

“The goal is to get them to believe in what they’re doing,” MHS head coach Scott Johannes said of the formation change. “It’s something that they’re comfortable with. We’ve got a couple guys playing differently, but when 100 percent of the guys are believing, they don’t have that doubt about how they can play and we saw that today.”

The zero on the other end of the scoreboard was another welcome sight for the Bobcats that have averaged 5.3 goals allowed per game heading into Friday’s matchup.

“They all played so hard,” Bell said. “Even when someone got a card, people stepped in, and we all just worked well as a team and stood our ground. … I thought it was [keeper Cristian Ibarra Alvarado]’s best game of the season for him and I told him as much.”

Mason City had the speed up top to challenge the Bobcats, but MHS was able to de-fuse most situations and Alvarado was reliable in-between the posts.

“They just played together and limited the mistakes,” Johannes said. “Usually they think about it too much but we’ve really focused on keeping it simple and that’s what they did with starting it out back.”

Ortiz split a pair of Riverhawk defenders for a goal 10 minutes into the second half and about five minutes later Zambrano cleaned up a Juan Luis Garcia shot off the post for his second tally of the night.

The Bobcats have a pair of early-week tilts at home vs. Perry on Monday and then at Des Moines Hoover on Tuesday before a week off that will likely allow the Bobcats to get to full strength.

Jett Jansen saw his first minutes of the season on Friday and Johannes noted he expects Luis Monge Jr. and Joel Ortiz to join the varsity roster in the coming days.

“Hopefully this will give us a springboard into next week,” Johannes added. “We talked about this being a restart with this new formation and the confidence that it’ll give us going into next week.

Bell added, “I feel like we have a lot of momentum now knowing that we have people coming back, getting healthy. We feel like we’re on the rise and that people should be looking out for us.”