Lady Tigers soccer falls to Jackson

The McClain varsity girls soccer team lost to Jackson Thursday night in Greenfield, 4-0, but they played very hard and never quit competing to the end.

Jackson, who is one of the conference favorites in girls soccer, came into this match vs. the Lady Tigers fresh off a big win over Chillicothe, who has dominated girls soccer since they’ve been a member of the Frontier Athletic Conference. The Ironladies also have one of the best players in the league, Sydney Carpenter, who scored three of her team’s four goals in the match for the hat trick.

“I always say at the end of the day that soccer is a team sport, and you need to have everyone play offense and defense together for one common goal, and that’s to win the game,” McClain head coach Blain Bergstrom said. “Jackson has a solid team all the way around with a really good goalie that we didn’t score on in either game this year.

“I thought we played hard and competed with them physically, but they still were able to come out on top.”

Carpenter scored the only goal of the first half at the 32:04 mark, but after that it was a defensive battle the rest of the way.

“The first 10 minutes of the match I thought we struggled a little bit, but then we got settled in and played the last 30 minutes pretty well and trailed just 1-0 at the half,” Bergstrom said. “I talked to our girls at halftime and told them we need to focus that first 10 minutes of the second half and get some momentum going, and I think they did that.

“But then we gave up another goal to the Carpenter girl, and things started to snowball after that. She’s a really good player and creates a lot of opportunities for them. We knew coming in to this game we needed to slow her down, and we weren’t able to do that.”

Carpenter scored the first goal of the second half at the 28:45 mark and followed that up less than a minute later with an unassisted breakaway goal at the 28:11 mark.

The Ironladies scored the fourth and final goal of the match at the 26:37 mark by Braelyn Brennan, making it three scores in less than a three-minute stretch.

“Jackson is one our league favorites,” Bergstrom said. “So for us to get over the hump, we need to beat someone like them.”

The Lady Tigers will play at Peebles on Monday, Sept. 25, and they host Miami Trace on Tuesday, Sept. 26 and entertain Chillicothe on Thursday, Sept. 28.