Second-half momentum carries Big Walnut girls soccer past Buckeye Valley, 5-1

By ERIC CLINE

For The Sun­bury News

Last Thursday’s (Sep­tem­ber 27) match may just have rekin­dled the Big Walnut-Buckeye Val­ley rivalry in girls soccer.

Buck­eye Val­ley was strong in the first half, despite falling behind by a goal, but Big Wal­nut took momen­tum in the sec­ond half and fin­ished with a 5–1 non-league deci­sion at Buck­eye Val­ley High School.

“We over­pow­ered them a lit­tle bit in the sec­ond half, but I wouldn’t say this was one of our bet­ter games,” Big Wal­nut coach Jim Rear­don said. “I thought we were a lit­tle com­pla­cent and weren’t work­ing hard at times. It was like we were run­ning in sand, but it’s a win. Nobody asks you how you won, you just say we won. You win some and you lose some, but today was our day.”

Big Wal­nut (8–5) still had its hands full with the hosts as Buck­eye Val­ley (5–3) out­shot the Golden Eagles 13–8 in the first half and 32–25 for the game. The Barons also had 19 shots on goal to Big Walnut’s 17, and held a 3–1 edge in cor­ner kicks.

“We had a very solid first half and I thought we were just as strong in the first seven min­utes of the sec­ond half,” Buck­eye Val­ley coach Bradd Smi­ley said. “We took a lot of shots in the early moments of the sec­ond half, and if we could have put one of those shots in the back of the net, it would have been a dif­fer­ent game, but hats off the Big Walnut.”

“Buck­eye Val­ley played really well in the first half, in fact, they out­played us,” Rear­don said. “We finally put one in near the end of the half, but (junior for­ward) Sky­lar Fleak had four or five good shots that their goal­keeper stopped. They’re a good team and they’re well-coached.”

The game was a defen­sive bat­tle for the first 35 min­utes or so, as both teams had chances that the other teams’ back lines were able to repel.

“We’re still pretty strong on defense,” Rear­don said. “Every year I’ve done this, I’ve tried to pick the strongest peo­ple to play defense, and some­times we get beat, but we still have the strongest play­ers on our squad play­ing on the back line, and both our goal­keep­ers had good halves.”

“We were try­ing to make adjust­ments to go against their strong back line,” Smi­ley said. “They dropped four back on us and took us out of our com­fort zones on the front line, but I thought we hit the seams very well, but maybe we just didn’t get enough on our shots here and there.”

Big Wal­nut finally broke the draw when sopho­more defender Makenna Ham­mond fed a pass to sopho­more for­ward Abby Tabor on the right side of the 18-yard box, and Tabor rifled a shot past Buck­eye Val­ley junior keeper Marisa Shep­pard with 4:48 left in the first half, the only goal of the open­ing 40 minutes.

Buck­eye Val­ley again chal­lenged the Big Wal­nut defense in the early moments of the sec­ond half, get­ting seven solid chances, three of them on the Golden Eagle net, but senior Jor­dan Lyle, who took over for junior Macken­zie Pike at the start of the sec­ond half, saved all three.

The Barons got another point blank chance shortly after, but senior Tay­lor Hyatt’s shot hit the left post. Big Wal­nut took the ball the other way, but a lead pass into the box got past both Shep­pard and senior defender Marisa Koss, and Golden Eagle senior for­ward Ash­ley Meade picked up the loose ball and scored with 33:02 left in the match.

Big Wal­nut added its third goal less than a minute later. Fleak took a pass from senior mid­fielder Bethany Bogantz and fired, but Shep­pard made the save. The rebound, how­ever, came out to junior mid­fielder Bai­ley Arm­strong, who deposited in the net with 32:29 left.

Buck­eye Val­ley got that goal back less than five min­utes later when junior Alyssa Spencer crossed a ball into mid­dle of the six-yard box to sopho­more Mad­die Oberle, who put it past Lyle with 27:46 remaining.

But Big Wal­nut made it a three-goal advan­tage again when Meade scored off a Buck­eye Val­ley deflec­tion five min­utes later, and ended the scor­ing with 15:13 to play when Fleak ripped a shot by senior keeper Shan­non Steinke from 25 yards out.

Pike fin­ished with seven saves in the first half and Lyle with 11 in the sec­ond for Big Wal­nut. Both Shep­pard and Steinke each had six saves for the Barons.

NEW ALBANY 3, BIG WALNUT 0 — The vis­it­ing Eagles scored a pair of sec­ond half goals, adding to an opening-half goal, en route to last Tuesday’s (Sep­tem­ber 25) 3–0 Ohio Cap­i­tal Con­fer­ence Cap­i­tal Divi­sion deci­sion over the host Golden Eagles in Sunbury.

Count­ing goals for division-leading New Albany (5–2-2, 4–0-0 OCC) were Emily Makowski, Danielle Dix­son and Sam Damante.

“We missed some opportunities,” Big Wal­nut head coach Jim Rear­don said after watch­ing his team drop to 7–5-0 over­all and to 2–2-0 in the con­fer­ence. “We missed a penalty kick, missed some shots, but New Albany is a strong team. You win some, you lose some, I guess.”

New Albany goal­keeper Meghan Jayes recorded 5 saves in the Eagle net for the shutout. The Golden Eagles’ Jor­dan Lyle and Macken­zie Pike com­bined for eight saves in the Big Wal­nut goal.

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Posted by Gary Henery on Oct 3 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.