Crawfordsville girls soccer is beginning to see the foundation for success being built. Two ties and two close matches have denied CHS their first victory of the season as they headed into Wednesday’s Sagamore Conference match against Lebanon. The Athenians opened the game against the Tigers dominating the possession game and after a couple of early chances on goal, Crawfordsville broke through when senior forward Lorelei Schmitzer-Torbert found the back of the net and gave the Athenians a 1-0 lead at the 17:04 mark of the first half. That goal would stand for the rest of the game and the Athenians defeated the Tigers 1-0 for their first win of 2022.
The win was even a little extra special for CHS as they notched their first Sagamore Conference win since 2015.
“In the first few close games that we’ve had we didn’t compete for the full 80 minutes, but tonight we did,” Crawfordsville coach Alex Ehrlich said. “We had girls who were getting pulled out of position still battling till the final horn and the erred on the side of aggression which I loved to see. Every single girl tonight was communicating and supporting their team which I haven’t seen often because some of them are pretty quiet. I’m just really proud of each and every one of them.”
To begin the second half, Lebanon came out of the gates and applied immediate pressure on the Crawfordsville defense, which have allowed just six total goals in their last four games. However the Athenian defense stood strong and denied the Tigers from ever putting a goal through.
Lebanon historically has been a power in the Sagamore Conference and for the Athenians to finally pull through and be able to down the Tigers was a special feeling for Ehrlich.
“I can’t lie, it feels really good to be able to beat Lebanon,” Ehrlich said. “Historically Lebanon has been a team that you look at on your schedule and think you’re probably going to lose. To say that we competed and controlled the game against a team like that, says a lot and we played good quality soccer in order to be able to get it done.”
The Tigers with the loss are still in search of their first win of the season as they fall to 0-4 (0-2 SAC). First year coach Sam Parsons thought coming in that this would be a chance for her team to snag that first win, but in the end was disappointed with her team’s performance overall.
“I told them at the half that their attitudes needed to change,” Parsons said. “We’ve played better teams than Crawfordsville and have executed better. When I did get on them about it I did notice a change, but that change didn’t come quick enough for us to capitalize on the chances we were given.”
With the win CHS improves to 1-3-2 on the season. They will have sometime to rest before their next game as it isn’t until next Tuesday when they travel to Danville.
“We’ve been developing some grit with our team,” Ehrlich noted. “We’re really starting to see what it looks like to win. For us we’ve been focused on taking as many little wins as we can because we may not see a ton of wins in our games, but we’ll take when we win 50/50 balls, finding our teammates feet, executing a good give and go, those sorts of things lead to big wins and tonight we were able to get one of those big wins.”
