Girls Soccer: Dover tops St. Clairsville
St. Clairsville – Dover built a 3-0 first-half lead and held on for a 4-1 win over the Red Devils in girls soccer action Wednesday. The Crimson Tornadoes are 2-0.
From Dover Coach James Kline:
Last night, the Dover Tornadoes traveled to St. Clairsville to play our second game of the season. Early on, our speed and athleticism seemed difficult for St. Clairsville to match. That showed when Ava Zobel played a ball from the backline over the Red Devil’s backline where Emilyn Feller could use her speed to break through and hit a well-placed shot that found the side netting for our first goal.
We always talk about the first and last five minutes of a half and the five minutes directly after a goal. It seems like teams are most susceptible to giving up another during this time. Luckily for us, that was true for us when Bridget McCrate ripped a shot from about 30 yards out that the keeper couldn’t handle about three minutes after Emilyn’s goal.
For the next 10 minutes, we continued to work for opportunities before Belen Bravo-Angel and Bridget McCrate connected for a beautiful give-and-go that put McCrate through the Red Devil’s defense where she was able to get off a quick shot before the defenders closed in on her for our third goal.
During half-time, our talk was centered around putting teams away and not allowing St. Clairsville to get a goal or else it would make for a much longer and more difficult second half. Unfortunately, we lost focus on a corner kick and allowed the ball to get knocked around until Ashlynn Lednik headed the ball past our keeper for their first goal of the game.
That put the score at 3-1 with 34 minutes to go.
St. Clairsville seemed recharged after the goal as expected and now the girls had to work even harder to finish the game with a win. Thankfully, our defense really tightened up and didn’t give the Red Devils any more dangerous chances.
Giving up the goal did seem to wake us up a bit too and this helped create our last goal. We continued to pressure the ball a lot and due to this, a deflection off one of their defenders took a bad bounce and snuck past the goalkeeper for our fourth and final goal of the night. Give credit to St. Clairsville though for never packing it in or giving up until the final buzzer went off.
We are excited about our start to the season but know that we have some tough matchups ahead and realize our goals are bigger than regular-season victories. We are off to Canal Fulton on Saturday to take on the Northwest Indians at 11:30 a.m.