In an intense Valley District game, the Rockbridge County High School girls soccer team battled back from a 2-0 deficit but came up short, suffering a 4-3 home loss to Turner Ashby on Tuesday night in Lexington.
After TA (4-4-0 overall, 3-2-0 district) took a 3-2 lead when Aubrey Eberly scored with 3:55 left, Sofia Smith answered back for the Wildcats (2-3-0 overall and district) by kicking in a goal from long range, on an assist from Lucy Boller-Pinkham, to tie the game with 2:33 left. In the closing moments, the Knights got a corner kick and scored the winning goal on a header from Sofia Garber.
Earlier in the game, the Knights had kept the ball in their offense for most of the first half. TA’s Stella Hughes scored to give the visitors a 1-0 lead with about 19 minutes left in the first half. After several saves by RC sophomore goalkeeper Caden Marshall, Eberly scored by booting the ball from Marshall’s left side to make it 2-0 with about two minutes left in the first half. Just before halftime, RC’s Boller-Pinkham scored on the run to cut TA’s lead to 2-1.
About midway through the second half, with the Wildcats playing more aggressively, RC’s Madelyn Jones scored from TA goalkeeper Katie Herrell’s right side to tie the game 2-2. Both defenses stepped up until the final series of goals.
Marshall made eight saves for the Wildcats, while Herrell collected five saves for the Knights.
The Wildcats will continue district play when they visit Rocktown on Friday, starting with junior varsity action at 5:30 p.m.
For the full story on this week’s action, with photos from Tuesday’s game, please see our April 30 newspaper. The story on last week’s games will be in our April 23 newspaper.
