Girls Soccer: Dover to take on West Holmes for District Championship

Final Score: Dover 5 – Carrollton 1

Location: Harrison Central

Kickoff: 7:00 PM

Wednesday night, the Dover Tornadoes continued our playoff run with a match against the Carrollton Trojans. Carrollton was a team we didn’t know much about going into last night, but based on their record and results we knew we were in for a game. We had another fun filled night of crummy weather, but the girls continued to stay focused on the game in hand and found a way to win. We picked up a motto a while back, “Don’t find an excuse, find a way” and we have really embodied that motto this season. From the jump, we knocked the ball around well and tried to build our attack with keeping possession and switching the field to attack the sidelines. Nineteen minutes into the game, the constant attack finally broke the Carrollton defense when Alyssa Feller put a dangerous ball into the box and it beat the keeper to the front post. The Trojans didn’t fold after the first goal and continued to try and press for their own goal. Unfortunately, off a corner with six minutes to go in the half the Trojan’s hard work also paid off with a goal of their own off a beautiful put back shot that I don’t think any goalkeeper could have stopped.

It seems that we have become comfortable with 1-0 or 1-1 scores at half. We talked about a few adjustments to make in the second half, but again, we just needed to continue getting chances and just finish them. That is exactly what we did, we came out firing on all cylinders and again Alyssa Feller put another dangerous ball into the box that deflected off a defender and into the back of the net for our and her second goal just over four minutes into the half. Then, twenty minutes into the second half, off a great corner from Bridget McCrate, Ava Zobel found her first goal of the season. From there you could see that the score started to affect Carrollton and they had to make some adjustments to try and find a goal. Then about ten minutes later, off another corner kick the ball was kicked around a few times in the box when it popped out where Elizabeth Lane hit a beautiful shot for her first goal of the season. Any time you get a goal from your starting center back and holding midfielder you will take it. Two minutes after Elizabeth’s goal, Alyssa decided to earn another hat trick with a pure determination goal. She fought through three different defenders for the ball, pushed it past them, and hit a great shot for our fifth goal of the game. It’s great to see Alyssa start rolling. She’s such a talented player and tough competitor, but has been hampered all year with ankle issues. Overall, it was a great team victory over a very young and talented Carrollton team.