LINDEN — North Montgomery girls’ soccer needed a Sagamore Conference win after three straight losses, and Thursday night the Chargers’ top two players delivered in a 7-0 county and conference victory over Crawfordsville.
“We have hit a definite rough patch in the middle of the season,” North Montgomery coach Julie Hodges said. “but I could take bits and pieces from each of the games we’ve played, and could be like ‘that’s the team I know we have,’ and then that was my challenge today was give me the 80 minutes.”
Back-to-back-to-back losses to Frankfort, Danville, and Tri-West were distant memories on Thursday as Teegan Bacon collected a hat trick in the first half and Sidney Campbell added a pair of second goals as the Chargers moved to 8-5 on the season.
The loss drops the Athenians to 0-8, just their third game back from a two week quarantine, but coach Laurie Vellner was pleased with the effort.
“We improved since the last time we saw them, which is a step in the right direction,” she said. “We are definitely lacking conditioning after coming back from our quarantine.”
North Montgomery defeated Crawfordsville 10-1 back in mid-August in a non-conference meeting.
“The last time we played them it was something like 9-0, and so we remembered that,” she said. “So it’s a mental game already, but if you look at the beginning of the game, up until that first goal we were playing even and I thought once they scored that first goal the mentality went down.”
Bacon scored her first goal at the 15 minute mark, and quickly made it 3-0 in favor of the Chargers midway through the first half. With her trio of goals, the sophomore broke the single-season goals scored record with her 22nd goal of the season. Sidney Campbell set the record with 20 back in 2018, and now as a senior Campbell is chasing her teammate with 17 goals on the season of her own.
“It’s going to be a battle until the end,” Hodges said. “but that’s the thing though these two feed off of each other. You look and see who is getting the assists, and it’s Teegan and Sidney getting the assists to each other. They’re such a tandem up top. They’re unselfish, they look for each other and they’re all about the team win.”
Lydia Dugard and Haley Sommer each added second half goals for the Chargers.
North returns to the pitch on Monday against Faith Christian, while Crawfordsville travels to Tri-West.
