Crawfordsville girls’ soccer carried an abundance of confidence into its Sagamore Conference opener against Frankfort on Wednesday night.
Riding a 1-0 win over Greencastle earlier in the week — the Athenians’ confidence paid off taking the Hot Dogs to the wire in a 1-1 (2-1) shootout loss.
“It was really exciting being able to come into this game with some confidence knowing that we are a team that can win,” first-year Crawfordsville coach Alex Ehrlich said. “I’m thrilled, because this team has done so much. That last 20 minutes of total time, we came out to compete and looked like we were a winning team.”
Crawfordsville (1-2, 0-1 SAC) took an early lead on a breakaway goal by Jayda Roach in the seventh minute, before Mia Hernandez tied the game with a goal in the 28th minute for Frankfort (2-2, 1-0 SAC).
Both teams were scoreless in the second half and through a pair of seven minute overtime periods — setting up a shootout.
Crawfordsville took an early 1-0 advantage on a make by Lorelei Schmitzer Torbet, but the Hot Dogs punched in their final two attempts, including goalie Vannessa Guardado’s game-deciding make.
“I don’t see this as a failure by any means,” Ehrlich said. “I mean our goalkeeper Zoey (Corbin) was on it today and it was just an unfortunate series of events and she did her job. I couldn’t have asked for more from her. Jayda Roach had a lot of good attacks on goal and that was huge.”
Through three games, the Athenians have alread matched their goal total from all of last season and are making positive strides under a first-year head coach.
“I’m starting to see girls’ heads get picked up and when they do receive that ball, there are times where it’s like they know what they’re going to do with it, stringing together passes and everything has a purpose when we step on the field,” Ehrlich said.
Crawfordsville is at Benton Central on Saturday.
