GREENFIELD – The McClain Lady Tigers soccer team hosted the Washington Lady Blue Lions on Thursday at McClain High School in a Frontier Athletic Conference matchup that the Lady Tigers won by a final score of 7-1.
Kerrigan Pollard led the way for the Lady Tigers with four goals in the game. Pollard scored two goals in the first half and two in the second half to propel McClain to the conference victory.
Pollard recorded her 100th career goal as a member of the Lady Tigers’ soccer team on Thursday with 5:04 to play in the first half against the Lady Blue Lions to put McClain up 5-0.
“She (Pollard) had a monster year last year with 46 goals and I think she has 16 or 17 this year,” said Lady Tigers’ coach Tyler Carman. “She is seeing double and triple teams this year all year. …A great career milestone, much well deserved, she’s a hard worker and great teammate. Just proud of all her accomplishments the last four years.”
The Lady Blue Lions scored their only goal with 3:56 to play in the first half to bring the score to 5-1 in favor of the Lady Tigers at halftime.
McClain added goals at the 27:10 mark and 23:41 mark of the second half to provide the final score.
Payton Pryor had two goals for the Lady Tigers and Haley Anderson had one to account for the remainder of the scoring for McClain.
“It was a good bounce back. We struggled Tuesday night at Hillsboro. So, it was nice to get back on the winning track,” Carman told The Times-Gazette. “We kind of made some adjustments yesterday at practice and it was nice to see them pay off a little bit.”
The Lady Tigers will be back in action on Tuesday when they travel to Jackson to take on the Lady Ironmen in FAC action.
Volleyball
In volleyball action on Thursday night the McClain Lady Tigers hosted the Washington Lady Blue Lions at McClain High School, but were unable to stave off the hard-charging ladies from Washington and fell 3-1 in four sets.
The FAC volleyball matchup was a closely contested affair that saw the Lady Tigers take the first set 25-22 when McClain was able to break the serve of Washington’s Abigail Joseph. Lily Barnes stepped behind the service line at 24-22 and recorded the set point for the Lady Tigers to put McClain ahead 1-0 in the match.
The second set of the match was not so kind to the Lady Tigers as they fell in to the Lady Blue Lions by a score of 25-15. Washington’s Aaralyne Estep led the way in the set with a stretch of consecutive service points, including two aces, to put the set out of reach for McClain and tie the match at one set apiece.
Washington secured the third set on an ace by Allison Mongold that provided the final of 25-17 and gave the Lady Blue Lions a 2-1 match lead.
The fourth and final set of the match was a back-and-forth affair in which Taylor Harper started off with two consecutive aces and gave McClain an early 2-0 advantage.
The Lady Blue Lions would have none of it though as they quickly stopped the McClain momentum and took a brief lead at 6-4. From there it was a back-and-forth affairwith six ties and the largest advantage in the set for the Lady Blue Lions was three points.
McClain showed a lot of fight in the fourth set, but was ultimately unable to get over the hump and fell to Washington 25-21 in set for and lost the FAC match 3-1.
“I’m really proud of the girls. Even though we lost we played way better tonight then we have all season,” McClain coach Taylor Alsop told The Times-Gazette. “We had really good play and they were all talking.”
Ryan Applegate is a stringer for The Times-Gazette.
