The Lynchburg-Clay Lady Mustangs soccer team advanced to the regional finals with a thrilling 1-0 victory over the Wheelersburg Lady Pirates.
Wheelersburg and Lynchburg-Clay were evenly matched with both teams remaining scoreless deep into the second half.
Riley Creditt gave the Lady Mustangs their only goal at the 4:44 mark of the second half to propel Lynchburg-Clay to victory.
The keepers for both teams played tremendous games and recorded six saves apiece.
Lynchburg-Clay especially relied on their back line defenders; Emily Pinkerton, Olivia Balon, Chelsea Hart and Kali Cochran to keep the Lady Pirates off the board.
Head coach Dennis West said of his defenders, “I can’t describe the kind of game they played tonight. It was unbelievable. To hold Wheelersburg to no goals, after they scored 130 plus goals on the year, that was super. They just did a tremendous job of playing well.”
Creditt’s goal came after she slipped and fell in the box. The Wheelersburg keeper overplayed the ball allowing Creditt to stand up and net the deciding goal for the Lady Mustangs.
“They had two super players that we had to contain tonight. We felt like we did a really good job of frustrating them and containing them,” said West.
When reflecting on the deciding play of the game West said, “I was fully expecting this game to go to overtime. Then, Riley was in the right place and she just battles. She got right back up and bang!. She is tenacious, I don’t know of any other way to describe her than tenacious.”
The Lady Mustangs advance to the regional final game for the second year in a row.
“I got a text today from somebody I used to teach with and they said that no one expected us to be back where we were last year after losing all the seniors from last year’s team,” said West.
West finished by praising the play of his team this year, “They have not played anything other than great soccer ever since that Alexander game way back when. They have just played super soccer. You can underestimate them all you want to but, this is a good team. This is a really good team and I think they proved that again tonight.”
Reach Ryan Applegate at 937-402-2572, or on Twitter @RCApplegate89.
