Girls Soccer: Dover blanks Zanesville
The Dover girls soccer team scored a 1-0 win over Zanesville Thursday at Dover Middle School. With the win, Dover improves to 5-1-1 while Zanesville is 1-3.
Dover Coach James Kline:
We started the night by recognizing Lauren Grafe and her family as our lone senior and family. Lauren and her family have dedicated a lot of time and effort to the program spanning across the previous three years up until this year. Lauren’s sophomore year was a tough year record wise, but she persevered through that to help the team turn things around last and this year. It has been a pleasure coaching Lauren!
With the senior night ceremony concluding it seemed to give us a breath of fresh air after a tough outcome Tuesday. We talk a lot about the game in thirds and the final third has been where we have struggled to connect passes, be creative, and overall just finish shots. Well, last night, we started to look a lot more creative and connected with our passes, but still were a little hesitant with the passes and runs. Another positive was we came out energized and were able to possess a majority of the first half which helped limit Zanesville’s chances. About fifteen minutes into the first half, Carley Noretto and Belen Bravo-Angel connected for a nice through ball from Belen to Carley who ran through the Blue Devils defense and buried a shot past the Blue Devils goalkeeper. That was the only scoring in the first half and a lot of that was due to the Zanesville goalkeeper because we had other opportunities to score.
The half time speech was short. We told the girls to play the same, but to be more confident and quicker with their decisions. We took steps in the right direction last night, but just haven’t reached the point where the decisions come naturally. We still are a bit delayed with our decisions which leads to slower play and lanes closing. Once we start clicking we are going to be dangerous. The second half was much the same and we just couldn’t finish in the final third. However, we possessed the ball well and again limited Zanesville to non dangerous opportunities which was great.
Now we have four days off to get a much needed physical and mental break. We will now host Stuebenville on Saturday, Sept. 9, with a kickoff of 10 a.m. (Varsity) and one half of JV following the conclusion of the varsity match.
GOAL: 14:47 – Carley Noretto from Belen Bravo-Angel