A lot has changed in a year for the Catawba Ridge girls’ soccer team as they dropped their second consecutive match falling to 2-2 on the year with a loss to the Marvin Ridge Mavericks Tuesday night.
Catawba Ridge came into the game at 2-1 having dropped their first game of the season last week against Blythewood Saturday in the Viking Cup in Columbia. It was something that the defending 4A Upper State champions were not used to after an impressive run to the state title game last year. But this year’s team is not last year’s team as Catawba Ridge lost seven players to graduation last year. This year the team has just two seniors on the squad. Catawba Ridge has five freshmen on this year’s roster of 16 players with three of them starting for the Copperheads.
“We are a very young team,” said Catawba Ridge head coach Brandon Schmidt. “We still have the same expectations every single game, but its going to take time. There is going to be a huge learning curve.”
Marvin Ridge wasted no time opening the game up scoring within the first two minutes of the game to take the early 1-0 lead.
The Copperheads struggled to be able to gain possession for long periods of the first half, as the Mavericks were able to control possession and kept the ball away from Catawba Ridge. About midway through the first half, Marvin Ridge put the Copperheads in a deeper hole as they would go up 2-0 with just under 20 minutes in the first half.
As the first half wore on, Catawba Ridge started finding their rhythm more and started controlling the ball putting the Mavericks on defense. That rhythm was able to find a crack in the Marvin Ridge defense as Sadie Commerford scored from about 20 yards out down the center of the field to put the Copperheads on the board with about three minutes left in the opening half.
The second half was controlled in the early going by Marvin Ridge as they were able to hold possession for the first 10 minutes. Then with about 30 minutes left in the game, the Copperheads’ hit a shot by Alexa Dubrow off the top cross bar which showed that Catawba Ridge still had some fight in them.
From there the Copperheads controlled possession more and got some corner kicks in as well to keep the Mavericks on their toes. Catawba Ridge would play better in the second half and get more scoring opportunities, but struggled to actually score.
The Copperheads peppered the goal in the second half, but the Marvin Ridge defense was able to hold strong and not allow anything to get to the back of the net.
Other games…
The Nation Ford boys’ lacrosse program improved to 4-0 on the season with a 14-4 road win at Charlotte Latin.
Mac Banks: mac@fortmillprepsports.com, @fortprep
