Daviess County senior Hunter Clark scored for the second consecutive game Thursday as the Panthers were held in check for nearly 78 minutes during their 9th District contest with Owensboro.
Clark took a pass from teammate Hayden Boswell as his shot went by the Owensboro keeper to give the Panthers a 1-0 lead with 2:30 left. It was the only lead they would need.
Clark said with most of their team returning, the goal doesn’t change.
“The same as last year,” he said. “We’re all young still, not a lot of seniors. We’ve just got to keep working harder.”
DC coach Doug Sandifer said he doesn’t harp on the significance before certain matches because his players already know what’s coming.
“Yesterday (Wednesday) at practice we talked about things we wanted to do, just in general, not necessarily against Owensboro but what we needed to do better than we did Monday and we tried to do that,” he said.
Sandifer said despite returning a bulk of his players they’re still learning as they go.
“We return most everybody but we’re still a very young team,” he said. “Sophomores, juniors that haven’t played a whole lot of varsity even though they were on varsity last year. I’ve got to keep reminding myself of that. We have sophomores out there that are still learning. You just take the district result and you move on. Yes, it would have been great if it was a more comfortable result but the win is a win and we’ll take it and move to the next one.”
While DC returned a lot, the Devils did not as Owensboro only returned two starters from last year.
“We lost a lot but considering how much we’ve lost, we went to Madisonville (Tuesday), I didn’t know what to expect,” OHS coach Ryan Haley said. “With COVID practice, we’ve only been able to play ourselves. I was extremely pleased with that game and coming into this game, I felt the same way. I wasn’t sure about the outcome. I knew these boys would fight.”
Haley said at the end of the day, he’s thrilled with how his players contended.
Owensboro plays Monday at home against North Hardin while Daviess County plays Saturday at Louisville Trinity.
Sandifer said he hopes their difficult schedule brings good them good fortune later this season.
“I hope it prepares us for the postseason,” he said. “That’s why we do it. Occasionally we may have some lighter games on our schedule this year with the shortened schedule. It just worked out we’ve got a loaded schedule and it’ll be a test every game out and that’s okay. I think we’ll be a little more prepared postseason but anything can happen then too. My goal is for us to just get a little bit better every game and face the challenge in front of us.
“Saturday is going to be another big challenge. We’ll see where we are. I think this group will get up for challenges and that may have been a little of a letdown tonight because they knew what Owensboro lost and maybe they expected less from them. Owensboro played fantastic and made things very hard. Once you kind of get in that mindset going into a game, it’s hard to switch it in the middle of the game.”
Daviess County and Trinity are currently near the top of the Maher Rankings in Kentucky.
Daviess County 1, Owensboro 0
OHS (0-1-1) 0 0–0
DCHS (2-0) 0 1–1
Goals: DCHS: Hunter Clark
Assists: DCHS: Hayden Boswell
