LINDEN — The North Montgomery girls’ soccer teams’ offense was firing on all cylinders Wednesday night in a 10-1 win over Crawfordsville to open the 2020 season.
Sidney Campbell and Teegan Bacon led the Chargers with three goals apiece. North Montgomery managed 20 shots on goal, to the Athenians’ single attempt, which resulted in their only goal by Lorelei Schmitzer Torbert early in the second half. Kaylie Miller had the assist.
“The energy was very good, and I think we kept the energy most of the game,” longtime Chargers coach Julie Hodges said.
Hodges felt like their conditioning lacked at times, but was overall pleased with the effort.
“The actual intensity and attitude, I was very happy with from the start.”
The loss for Crawfordsville (0-2) is the second in as many days to start the season, but coach Laurie Vellner saw improvement from the 8-0 losst the Athenians suffered to Faith Christian on Tuesday.
“We did not the bad decisions when we were tired,” she said. “Did we still make bad decisions, yes, but it wasn’t because we were exhausted. I think we played better and smarter when we got tired than we did last night. Conditioning is normally a concern on regular season starts, and this year has been no exception to the rule with not doing stuff in the summer and things like that.”
Crawfordsville and North Montgomery were both in the same boat with no offseason workouts until early July due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Fortunately, for the Chargers (1-0), they returned every starter from a 9-8-1 squad that won seven of their last 10 games in 2019.
“Once we figured out those changes last year, we gelled so well together,” Hodges said. “And I think that’s one of our biggest advantages to this whole pandemic and not being able to play for so long is our entire starting lineup is back and we had it figured out at the end of last year. And so even though we missed almost two months in the summer, we knew where we left off and who we had back.”
Nina Gable added two goals, while Haley Sommer had one for the Chargers. Maggie Michael and Courtney Engels each had an assist.
Crawfordsville is back in action on Monday at 5:30 against Greencastle, while North Montgomery hosts South Vermillion at 10 a.m. on Saturday.
Matches with Danville, Greencastle, and Western Boone all follow next week for the Chargers, which as opponents accounted for four of their eight losses last season.
“The big thing is going to be our fitness and our spacing,” Hodges added. “We were way to bunched. Crawfordsville did a good job of packing it in the middle defensively, and it caused a lot of problems for us and we didn’t figure out how to space that out and spread them out, and so that’s definitely something we are going to have to improve on going forward.”
