The Bradford girls soccer team scored four goals in the second half to pull away from Ridgway Thursday en route to a 5-0 win at Parkway Field Thursday.
From the start, the Lady Owls (2-0) were maintaining possession, but the team had a difficult time putting the ball in the back of the net. Bradford fired off numerous shots on goal and kept the Ridgway defense busy, but getting the ball past goalkeeper Megan Rohr was a challenge.
“I think we probably had eight or 10 shots in the first 10 minutes and everything looked good, and then we kind of got away from that and we were standing around,” said assistant coach A.J. Lucas, who was acting head coach in place of Warren Shaw. “Our offense wasn’t moving the way we want them to…We were trying to take too many shots from outside.”
“They have a very good keeper. She’s very good. She probably made six or seven grade A saves on us and it could’ve easily been 5-0 at the half. It should’ve been, but she played so well. We were trying to take shots from 25-30 yards and she was just making all those saves,” he later added.
The Lady Owls managed to get on the board with a goal from freshman Kelsea Austin with 6:35 to go in the first half.
Up 1-0 at halftime, Bradford made some minor adjustments to positioning.
“We flipped a couple of players,” Lucas said. “One was a little more comfortable in the midfield. One was a little more comfortable up top, so we switched them out and that seemed to get things going.”
The moves seemed to pay off as the Lady Owls wasted no time putting the game out of reach.
For the second straight game, Austin achieved a hat trick by scoring on a penalty kick at the 38-minute mark, which was followed by her third goal of the game with 35:07 to go in the second half. That third goal would be Austin’s seventh of the season.
“We felt like at halftime, she had kind of a hot foot today, so that’s why we put her up top to see if we can get something going with her,” Lucas said. “We’re excited about what she can bring to the table. She also played really well tonight in the midfield in the first half. She really was going sideline to sideline, tracking down balls and getting them back in and making some passes.”
Senior Chloe Shaw made it 4-0 in favor of the Lady Owls with a goal that bounced off the right post and into the goal at the 32:04 mark and fellow senior Mackenzie Lucas finished off the scoring by netting her third goal of the season with 29 minutes to play.
On the other side of the field, the team’s defense played strong and didn’t allow the Lady Elkers to pose any threat offensively.
“Emily Bosworth in the middle controlled every one of their punts,” Lucas said. “She was able to win the ball, it was usually a 1-on-2 and she won the ball back and got it up to our other two midfielders and we were able to keep our offense going. Our defense did a really good job staying compact when we didn’t have the ball.”
Following the team’s season opening win over Elk Catholic on Monday, head coach Warren Shaw said he wanted the team to play more loose on Thursday.
The team did play looser…only because of Shaw not being there, according to Lucas.
“With Coach Shaw not here, the girls always play looser,” Lucas said with a laugh. “I thought they started tightening up though a little bit about maybe 10 or 15 minutes when they weren’t scoring…Once we got that quick one in the second half, you could really see them kind of exhale and go ‘OK, we can really loosen up now and just start playing.’”
Lucas also said they were able to get all of the substitutes in the game which gives the younger players some valuable game experience they normally wouldn’t get.
Next up for Bradford is a road matchup against St. Marys on Saturday, a team that has also started the season off with a 2-0 record.
“It’s going to be a much tougher game,” Lucas said. “It’s not like we’re playing a much smaller school. We’ve played them in scrimmages the past couple of years and it’s always been pretty tight and we’re looking for a tough game. We’re looking for a real game that we’re going to have to work our butts off and hopefully come out of there with a win.”
