Daviess County rolled to a second straight girls’ soccer 9th District championship Tuesday night, shutting out Apollo 5-0.
It was a dominant effort from the Lady Panthers, recording 20 shots with 10 on goal.
“I think overall we played pretty well,” Daviess County head coach David Sandifer said. “We did a good job of possessing the ball and moving. We were pretty active. Even if we didn’t score, we had a lot of girls active in the goals we did get.”
Kate McCain gave the Lady Panthers an early 1-0 lead in the 11th minute, and from there the floodgates opened. For the majority of the first half, Daviess County possessed the ball in the Apollo end, peppering goalie Rebecca Jones continuously.
Maddy Purcell, who had missed the past month with an injury, gave her team a 2-0 lead heading into halftime.
“It’s great to be back,” Purcell said. “I’ve missed it and it felt really good to score. We try to run that corner play a lot because most teams don’t guard it.”
Entering the second half, the Lady Panthers knew they couldn’t take their foot off the gas. Molly Floyd led the way, scoring twice in the first five minutes.
“I usually don’t play up top,” Floyd said. “I’m usually a defender. Whenever I play up top, I try to do the most I can and make different runs that aren’t normal. I try to make runs that players can make an easy pass to.”
In the 54th minute, Lillian Coombs made it 5-0, finding the back of the net off of a feed from Mary Evelyn Wiman and negating any chance the E-Gals had at a comeback.
Both Apollo and Daviess County advance to the 3rd Region tournament, which begins this weekend.
“We need to take every game at a kind, but we have a solid chance if we play the way we know we can play,” Purcell said.
