The Washington Lady Blue Lion varsity soccer team visited Miami Trace High School for the first of two meetings between the Fayette County rivals Tuesday, Sept. 17.
For the first time this season, Washington led at the half, 1-0.
Miami Trace responded with three goals in the second half while holding Washington scoreless to secure the 3-1 victory.
Freshman Addison Chambers scored her first career goal for Washington and that goal held sway at the half.
“That was the first lead we’ve had all season,” Washington head coach Chris Chambers said. “Addie scored on a breakaway. That was her first high school goal. I’m really excited about that.
“With our girls, coming off the field at the half, I could kind of see they were a little deer in the headlights, what do we do now?,” Chambers said. “We said, ‘hey, let’s go out there and try to step it up a notch.’ Don’t go into, ‘oh, my goodness’ mode and get scared. I wanted the girls to push the defense up a notch.”
Emily Powell scored for the Lady Panthers to tie the game with 33:41 to play in the second half.
Magarah Bloom scored on a penalty kick at the 17:50 mark and Bloom scored again with 15:15 remaining, the assist going to Reagan Barton.
Aubrey Schwartz had three saves in goal for Miami Trace.
Washington had five shots and Miami Trace took 36 shots.
“I think we came out very slow in the first half,” Miami Trace head coach Caitlin Francis said. “We had a lot of shots, we just didn’t capitalize. We controlled a lot of the game, but we did have a defensive breakdown that they were able to capitalize on.
“We tried to clean some things up in the second half,” Francis said. “We still had the ball offensively a lot, we did well with that. We just had some trouble putting it in the back of the net.”
“We had some mistakes,” Chambers said. “It’s little things with such a young team. We have to teach the small things. If we’re not good at the small things, sometimes those mistakes (are costly).
“We had a couple of nice runs toward the goal (in the second half),” Chambers said. “I was impressed with the runs we had. Attacking-wise, that is the best game we’ve had, period. I’m hoping this game will let the girls know that, hey, we can do this. Hopefully this will boost our confidence going forward.”
Washington is at McClain Thursday and Miami Trace (5-3 overall, 3-1 in the FAC) is at home to host Jackson. Both are FAC contests starting at 5 p.m.
In other FAC girls soccer action Tuesday, Chillicothe defeated Jackson, 4-1 and Hillsboro beat McClain, 7-1.
