By Don Eskins
With the score knotted up at 2-2, and just five minutes remaining on the game clock, the skies opened up and the rains came pouring down to put an abrupt end to what was shaping up as a classic season inaugural clash between the Willard Lady Tigers and the host Logan-Rogersville Wildcats Tuesday night.
But despite the disappointment of not being able to finish the soccer confrontation both the Wildcat and Tiger coaching staffs felt that a lot of questions had been answered about the upcoming 2017 season.
“This was a tough way to have to end this one. But that’s just the way it goes sometimes when the weather doesn’t cooperate,” said Wildcat head coach Brett Wubbena. “But I was very pleased with the way our kids battled throughout the game. We have a lot of girls this year in new positions and their efforts were encouraging.”
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“We started out a little sloppy today, and the Wildcats took advantage of some of our mistakes. But we came back to play a much better second half,” Tiger head coach Tim Magee said in assessing his girls play. “We lost a lot of offense from last year’s team so we’ve been concerned about getting that part of the girls game going. They played hard the whole game today and they came up with two big scores for us. That’s something we can build on.”
The Lady Tigers got on the scoreboard first via a penalty kick from sophomore Maddie McClendon at the 28.38 mark of the opening period of play.
Willard’s lead was short lived though. The Cats stormed back to tie the match up just minutes later, at 1-1, on a goal by Taylor Overstreet.
Logan-Rogersville would go on to grab their first lead of the game at the 20.01 mark of the second half on a score from freshman Shelby Ince.
But the Lady Tigers weren’t about to give up. With 8.36 left in the final period of play sophomore Maddie Keith drove the ball into the back of the net to even the score up at 2-2 before the rains began to fall.
In junior varsity action the Wildcats topped the Tigers 2-0 on two goals from from freshman Briana Bieller.
