Lady Mustangs win on the road at McClain
GREENFIELD — The Lynchburg-Clay Lady Mustangs rebounded from a weekend loss in a big way on Monday night as they visited and defeated the McClain Lady Tigers, 12-1.
The win at McClain Field puts the Lady Mustangs at 1-1 overall after two non-league matches, with their loss coming on Saturday at Western Brown by a 1-0 score.
"We had a tough game at Western Brown on Saturday," LC head coach Dennis West said. "We really played hard, but just couldn't get anything going, so this was kind of a rebound game for us."
At one time after the first 10 minutes, West switched up a majority of the team with a different lineup.
"We got rolling pretty well later in the first half, and this was a good match for us to rebound and it gave us a chance to work on things we needed to work on," West said. "We have plenty of room for improvement on passing and crossing."
In total, three Lady Mustang players finished with two goals each in McKayla Binkley, Keanna Oaks and Shelby Stewart.
On Monday, though, it was a different story than Saturday with LC scoring their first goal of the match and of the season (28:31 left in the first half) off the foot of Binkley with the assist from All-State player Sydney Cromer.
That was followed with LC scoring a goal with 22:16 left in the opening half on a breakaway from the MHS defense.
The third goal of the Lady Mustangs came with 22:05 on the first half clock as Hannah Binkley made it a three-goal lead, and that was followed with Cromer putting the ball into the back of the net at the 15:16 mark of the first for a 4-0 advantage.
MHS was down, but not out as Taylor Polley scored the Lady Tigers' lone goal with 14:23 remaining in the first half, outrunning the defense of LC for the goal.
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From there, it was all LC, with Oaks scoring back-to-back goals with 10:43 and 9:52 on the clock in the opening half. Those goals were assisted by Cromer and Morgan Fittro for a 6-1 advantage.
LC ended the first half with a goal from Lexi Waits with 4:59 on the scoreboard.
The second half saw LC goals from Sam Whitenack (assisted by Alexa Cochran) at 32:33 and Courtney Stewart (17:23) for a then 9-1 advantage. From there, Shelby Stewart scored the 10th goal of the night for LC (16:40), followed by McKayla Binkley (12:36) for the 11-1 advantage.
LC's final goal came with 9:50 left in the match with Shelby Stewart scoring her second goal.
"We have 12 girls I can pretty much rotate up front, and we don't lose a whole lot," West said. "We had 22 girls here (Monday) that were healthy, and this gave us a chance to work on combinations that we normally don't work on."
MHS keeper Bailey Davis still finished with over 20 saves on the evening.
"I think she did an exceptional job with all the shots on goal at her this match," MHS head coach Shawn Peterman said. "She had an active evening at goal. You really don't like to see the keeper being active, but I'm glad she had good hands."
Peterman also spoke about his McClain (0-1) team.
"Hannah Smith stepped up and took a leadership role," Peterman said. "We have a relatively green team this year. We have a lot of sophomores that we'll build off of, and I expect them to develop and progress as the season goes on."