Fort Mill girls still undefeated in soccer

The Fort Mill High girls’ soccer team ended a four-game shutout streak but kept its unbeaten season intact with a 3-1 non-region win over A.C. Flora at Bob Jones Stadium Tuesday.

The Yellow Jackets dominated the ball for the entire first half, but couldn’t connect on a scoring chance until nearly 20 minutes in as the Falcons packed five defenders deep in their zone.

After running a set short corner play following the third corner kick of the game, midfielder Ashley Hogg scored the game’s first goal from the right box.

The Jackets followed Hogg’s goal with a well-orchestrated attack, holding the ball on their side of field for the majority of the half.

“We want to play our way and make teams adjust to us,” coach Chris Quinn said.

“We have a nice group of girls here and have some that can fill in different positions if we need them to. I like to keep attacking the way we’re doing it and not make too many adjustments.”

Fort Mill continued to attack and after junior forward Meredith Christopher juked right and fired a left-footed rocket past the A.C. Flora goalkeeper with 12:24 to go in the half, the Yellow Jackets seemed to be in complete control.

But the Falcons sneaked past the defense late and forward Katie Timbes scored on A.C. Flora’s only shot of the half to give the Yellow Jackets a tenuous 2-1 lead entering the break.

“When you play good teams like this and they feel like they’ve got some momentum they’ll come out hard in the first five to 10 minutes so we made sure we stayed in our formation back there,” Quinn said.

The Falcons opened the half much more organized offensively, but the Yellow Jacket back line of Lauren Glowacki, Kayla Deitz, Mallory Kovacs, Helen Scholten and Madelon Thompson held up, only allowing A.C. Flora two shots for the entire game.

“I’m so happy with my back line,” Quinn said. “They talk well and don’t let a lot of dangerous stuff happen. They keep everything controlled back there and that makes it real hard to beat us up the middle.”

Sensing scoring was going to be at a premium, A.C. Flora began to move players up on attack, setting up what would be the final goal.

After a ball was cleared from in front of the Yellow Jacket goal, Christopher, who had just missed an attempt minutes earlier, took possession 65 yards out and sprinted ahead of five pursuing defenders, sliding a well-placed roller past the keeper with 22:05 to play.

“I missed that one before, so when I got that ball I knew I needed to score that one,” said Christopher, a junior Elon recruit.

“I took a couple of big touches and tried to get it off and knew I had to finish it. This means a lot to us to come back from the break to get the win. We’re missing a couple of people in the midfield, so that hurt us, but we hung in there.”

From there, the Yellow Jackets subbed liberally and dominated the time of possession to move to 12-0-3 on the season. They out-shot the Falcons 20-2 on the game, dropping A.C. Flora to 3-6-1.

“It happened exactly like we thought with Meredith,” Quinn said.

“She had five girls chasing her, but we knew eventually if they bring everyone forward like they did that we’d get through, and she’ll score almost every time she gets that. We feel comfortable with where we’re at and we’re having a nice little season.

“I don’t think they’re taking it for granted, which is good, but they’ve been humbled. We’re trying to make a run to the end and that’s our main focus.”

This story was originally published April 8, 2016 at 6:56 PM with the headline "Fort Mill girls still undefeated in soccer."