Lady Mustangs shut out visiting Eastern

DODSONVILLE — Taking time for their offense to heat up, the Lynchburg-Clay Lady Mustangs controlled the tempo of their Southern Hills Athletic Conference game against the Eastern Lady Warriors Monday night, shutting out their conference foe, 4-0.

Lynchburg-Clay kept second place in the SHAC to themselves after their win against the Lady Warriors, leading by a 1-0 score at halftime, then finally getting things rolling in the second half by adding three more goals en route to the win.

“We’ve just struggled this year to find an identity,” Lynchburg-Clay head coach Dennis West said after the game. “We’ve played fairly decent soccer, but I didn't think we played particularly well this first half tonight. Dan (Silvis) had his kids — 10 players — playing hard, and this was just a typical Eastern/Lynchburg-Clay game.

“Our games are always going to be close, no matter what. I told the girls after the game it doesn't matter if he's got seven girls out there, it's going to be a close game, because they play hard all the time. We got a little wiser in the second half and started doing things that we expect the girls to do. If we are going to be successful — we don't have that go-to scorer like we had the last several years — we're going to have to work for our goals, and we're going to get goals from several girls.

“We had that tonight, and that's when we play well, when we are distributing the ball and moving it around and giving other girls opportunities,” West continued. “That worked for us in the second half played. We played much better in the second half.”

Even with only 10 players, the visiting Lady Warriors didn’t make things easy for LCHS, and even with the Lady Mustangs controlling the tempo with possession on their side for most of the game, the Lady Mustangs managed just one goal in the first half.

LCHS had 11 shots in the first half, as it was their eighth shot of the match that went past the Eastern keeper, with Miranda Smith scoring a goal off a through pass from Olivia Van Fleet for the 1-0 lead with 10:24 left in the first half.

In the second half, the Lady Mustangs had 17 shots in the final 40 minutes where they added three more goals in their four-goal win, with the first goal of the second half coming at the 25:17 mark of the half with Savannah Bell scoring a goal off a cross kick from Jayden Maxfield for the assist and the 2-0 lead.

The score went to 3-0 as Aubrey Slack also scored off a cross kick with the assist from Mayfield with 21:17 on the clock. LC’s final goal came with 20:53 left in regulation as Smith scored her second goal, as the goal was unassisted.

LCHS keeper Allie Waits finished with one save in the shutout victory.

West spoke highly of the LCHS back line on defense.

“Our back line is really solid this year, and they make it very difficult for a team to get any kind of offensive challenge going, and that enables us to control the ball a little better than we have at times this year,” West said. “Tonight we did a good job of maintaining possession for the most part.

“Our back line tonight was Lily Layne, a freshman. Then we've got Audrey Barry as a junior, Sophia Michael is a sophomore, and our two seniors, Olivia Van Fleet and Addie Downing, they've been solid for us all year.”

The Lady Mustangs sit in second place in the SHAC soccer standings with a 3-0-1 record in the conference, as they have an overall record of 4-2-1. Eastern falls to 3-3-0 in the SHAC and 3-6-1 overall.

Next for Lynchburg-Clay is a SHAC game Wednesday, Sept. 18 vs. the Peebles Lady Indians (4-3-1, 1-2-1) at 4:30 p.m.

BOX SCORE
EHS    0 0 — 0
LCHS    1 3 — 4

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