RC Girls Drop Two Matches

The Rockbridge County High School girls soccer team dropped a pair of Shenandoah District matches last week, falling 8-1 last Tuesday to Waynesboro before suffering a 9-1 home setback to Stuarts Draft on Thursday.

With the losses, the Wildcats fell to 0-4, both overall and in the district.

Against Waynesboro (4-1-0 overall, 4-0-0 district), RC junior goalkeeper Caden Marshall made 14 saves against an aggressive offense, but she injured her knee and wasn’t able to dive to her left side later in the game.

Lucy Boller-Pinkham scored the Wildcats’ only goal on an assist from Anna Feldman.

SD 9, RC 1

On Thursday, Stuarts Draft (1-0-2 overall and district) was aggressive from the start. The Cougars kept in their offense for the vast majority of the game.

Draft’s Kendall Clark scored the first goal just under five minutes in, and teammate Ellie Weatherholtz put in another goal about five minutes later. The Cougars kept attacking, building up a 6-0 lead by halftime.

Marshall, still battling the knee injury, made 12 saves in the game, stopping three shots in the first 10 minutes of the second half. Draft’s Angela Hibshman then scored about 11 minutes into the half to extend the Cougars’ lead to 7-0.

The Wildcats prevented the shutout when Allison Licona-Asto got the ball to Lucy Boller-Pinkham, who dribbled toward the goal and fired a long shot to Draft goalkeeper Morgan Beauford’s right side that went into the opposite corner of the net, cutting the Cougars’ lead to 7-1 with 11:20 left. Draft responded with a goal several minutes later and scored again to end the game due to the eight-goal mercy rule with 4:10 left in regulation. Proud of her players for battling for the goal and playing better in the second half, RC head coach Carrie Dietz said, “They always say they’re a second- half team.” Commending the Cougars, Dietz said, “They are very aggressive. They’re well coached.” In their only game during spring break this week, the Wildcats were scheduled to play at Buffalo Gap on Monday. They’ll continue district play at Riverheads next Tuesday, starting with junior varsity action at 5:30 p.m., with the varsity game scheduled to follow at 7.