DANVILLE — Thursday night Southmont girls soccer team was mere minutes away from picking up their first win against Sagamore Conference foe Danville in school history. However a perfectly placed shot by Danville’s Maggie Teel found the upper right side of the goal with just four minutes left in the second overtime, and that ended being the game-winner as the Mounties fell 3-2.
“You can’t say enough about our girls and the desire they show to win,” Southmont coach Phill Keller said. “We are no longer a program that teams can just assume that they’ll beat us. I think they (Danville) came out a little flat tonight and once we scored those two quick goals they saw us as a threat. We are a motivated team who knows that we’re good just unfortunately it didn’t go our way tonight.”
Southmont (3-2-1, 1-2 SAC) got on the board in the games opening minutes as Hanna Nichols found the back of the net after Danville’s came too far out of the goal. Rory Teel then tied the game at 1-1 just six minutes late for the Warriors. Southmont would re-gain the lead in the 13th minute as Elle Gray made it a 2-1 advantage for the Mounties.
Teel also scored the game-tying goal in the 73rd minute to even up the game at 2-2 to go along with her game-winner in OT. Danville Coach Andy Kult knew after Southmont took a 2-1 lead that his team was in for a fight.
“We needed some extra speed back there so we decided to make a defensive change and it ended up working,” he said. “That goal by Maggie in overtime is as good as gets. She couldn’t have placed it any better and she decided that she was going to put the game in her hands in the second half and sometimes you need players like that.”
“I told Belle (Miller), that there’s no goal-keeper in the world who could’ve saved that shot,” Keller said of the game-winning goal. “It was a tremendous shot.”
Defense has been Southmont’s calling card for awhile now and for 72 minutes they held a Danville team, who scored six goals against North Montgomery, to just a single goal. Keller knows that as strong as they are right now on that side of the ball, they’ll only continue to get better.
“We’ve made a lot of progress on that side of the ball,” he said. “We have a great back four and goal-keeper (Belle Miller) and they are doing a great job for us. We’re just going to continue to build our overall team chemistry and look to get better each and every day.”
Danville will continue wrap up their Montgomery County schedule on Tuesday as they will travel to Crawfordsville for a matchup with the Athenians.
Southmont continues their conference slate also on Tuesday as they will welcome Frankfort to the Southmont athletic complex.
