BY GARY HAWKINS
SOUTH CHINA — Tuesday afternoon’s steady rain did little to dampen the rivalry between the Erskine and Lincoln Academy girls soccer teams, two clubs headed for the playoffs in their respective divisions.
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The teams played to a tie earlier in the year, but there was more at stake Tuesday in the regular season finale as both teams were jockeying for playoff position. Visiting Lincoln came away with a 3-1 victory thanks to a pair of second-half goals from junior forward Lillian Bisset.
Each team entered the game in sixth place — Erskine (7-3-4) in Class B East and Lincoln (8-3-3) in Class B West. Lincoln will gain a first-round bye and could finish as high as fourth which would give the team a home game in the quarterfinals while Erskine coach Ryan Nored expects his team to remain in sixth place which would mean home-field advantage in a prelim game Saturday.
Eskine dominated possession for the better part of the first half through its short- controlled passing game, but Lincoln goalkeeper Miranda Achorn kept her team in the game with five saves, including a pair of beauties against Christina Belanger and Kaylee Porter. Achorn stopped Belangers’s shot with a dive to her right while she deflected Porter’s rocket from the left side off the crossbar.
“She’s definitely our MVP,” Lincoln senior Leslie Sandefur said. “Miranda’s always been the girl that kept it together..”
Sandefur scored the game’s first goal, just 3 minutes 44 seconds into the game with a tough-angle shot from the right side that slipped into the far corner past Erskine keeper Cass Ray and Erskine spent the next 35 minutes trying to get the equalizer.
“For the middle 25 minutes I think they really owned us,” Lincoln coach Donovan York said.
Erskine scored its only goal with 1:40 left in the first half when senior midfielder Taylor Boucher lofted a shot from the right side that floated into the upper left corner of the goal.
“Our keeper didn’t see (Boucher’s) shot,” York said. “she said she got shielded and all of a sudden it was in the air, by her.”
Ray made just two saves in the first half but the second kept the game tied at 1 as she came to the top of the penalty area to stuff a breakaway by Sandefur as time expired.
Slippery footing factored more into the second half and so did Lincoln’s aggressive play.
“We’re not a physical team by any stretch,” Nored said.
York had sophomore Sophie Shumacher mark senior Avery Bond and it helped neutralize Erskine’s advantage at midfield.
“I think that helped us a great deal as far as keeping midifled from their control,” he said.
Bisset put her team ahed for good midway through the second half when her shot from the left side made it through a maze of played and hit under the crossbar over the goal line. Bisset ended Erskine’s comeback hopes with an insurance goal with 1:50 left.
Erskine finished with 11 shots on goal, seven in the first half, while Lincoln had nine, six coming in the second half.
“We played them to a 2-2 tie earlier in the season and it was as even as you could get,” York said. “a lot of these girls know each other because of the Jefferson connection and I think that has a lot to do with it as far as anticipating moves and things like that.”
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