Owensboro Catholic girls soccer has done it again, winning its second straight 9th District Championship by defeating Daviess County 2-0.
Junior Maddie Hayden helped the Lady Aces set the tone to start the match, with an early goal to take the 1-0 lead.
The goal also etched Hayden’s in the record books for the second time this season, breaking the single-season record for goals with 41.
Head Coach Andy Hines said Hayden has been thrilling to watch all season long and knows that Owensboro Catholic fans and alumni that have watched her break records are celebrating with her.
“Maddie’s huge,” Hines said. “She’s a great athlete. Beating Amber Barnett that plays at Western Kentucky is a huge thing… It’s awesome. She’s a great person and it’s well deserved.”
From there the game hit a stalemate, as Daviess County wasn’t possessing the ball but the Aces seemed to sputter.
Owensboro Catholic had shot after shot throughout the first half, but just couldn’t connect, sending them into halftime up 1-0.
Hines wasn’t thrilled with their effort in the first half and asked his team if just barely beating them was enough at halftime.
“I think [in the] first half we got the early goal and played pretty well,” Hines said. “I thought we could’ve got a couple more goals. After we got the goal I think we just kind of played a little bit of a kickball game. So at halftime we kind of got into them… They came out much better [in the second half].”
It didn’t take long for the Lady Aces to get on the board in the second half, as junior Katie Riney scored off of a rebound from a corner kick to make it a 2-0 game in the 42nd minute.
Despite continuing to attack and stifling the Lady Panthers offense, Owensboro Catholic couldn’t expand its lead. However, their lead was more than enough to push them past Daviess County and claim the 2-0 victory.
The lone goals for the Lady Aces came on corner kicks and Head Coach David Sandifer said they have to do a better job of eliminating those opportunities going forward.
“We just didn’t do a very good job of attacking and clearing the corner kicks,” Sandifer said. “If the ball is in the air, you have to win it… If you win the first one, you don’t have to worry about the second or third one.”
Daviess County wraps up the year second overall and will move on to region play, focusing on themselves in practice leading up to their games.
“Just gotta keep working on trying to get some stuff that we need to do better like clearing balls and playing the right ball,” Sandifer said. “And we may look at some alignment changes or some shape changes and see what happens.”
Meanwhile, Owensboro Catholic defended its 9th District Championship with the win and will look to stay strong in region play.
Hines said that they’re going to try to improve bit by bit in practice and build a gameplan for if they face Ohio County, whom the team feels they should’ve beat earlier in the season but lost 7-4.
“We gotta do a lot better against Ohio County,” Hines said. “I think we’re good with everybody else. We gotta slow down Carly Embry and figure out a way to shut her down. I think we know what we can do, but offensively we had a lot of opportunities in that game, so hopefully we put those away.”
Owensboro Catholic and Daviess County will find out their future opponents after a draw this Saturday.
9th District Girls Soccer Team
Katie Riney, Owensboro Catholic
Alana Rone, Apollo
Abby Beck, Owensboro
Lillian Coombs, Daviess County
Chandler Worth, Owensboro
Steeley Walker, Daviess County
Kara Green, Apollo
Maddie Hayden, Owensboro Catholic
Sydney Lovett, Owensboro
Ella Bratcher, Owensboro
Ginny Young, Owensboro Catholic
Emma Patterson, Daviess County
Elizabeth Hayden, Owensboro Catholic
Brooke Schwartz, Daviess County
Ashton Logsdon, Owensboro Catholic (9th District Player of the Year)
