WALES — Greely scored two goals in the first three minutes of the second half to turn the tide of Thursday’s Class B South girls soccer quarterfinal in a hurry and open the floodgates to down second-seeded Oak Hill 6-2 at Fairchild Field.
Logan Pray fed Sawyer Dusch 1:51 into the second half, then fed Kaci O’Grady 69 seconds later to give the No. 10 Rangers (8-7-1) a 3-1 lead.
Greely coach Josh Muscadin said his team made a self-adjustment at halftime.
“I always say, high school soccer, sometimes you never know who you’re going to get and who steps up to play. And clearly the first half we did not play the way we know how,” said Muscadin, who told his team at halftime “‘Show what you’re capable of doing.’ And I guess it must have sunk in.”
Oak Hill (12-3-0) coach Jeremy Young said he implemented some adjustments of his own after his team was “largely weathering the storm” in the first half.
“I thought we’d have a little more time to sort of work into them. And certainly they came out and scored (less than two minutes) into the second half. So it didn’t quite go the way we wanted it to,” Young said.
Like Muscadin, Young also expected to see a different Greely team in the first half after scouting the Rangers’ preliminary-round win over Spruce Mountain.
“I knew it would be coming,” Young said.
The Rangers were able to produce a couple of early corners and force Oak Hill freshman goalie Paige Gonya into a pair of diving saves.
But the Raiders got on the board first. A defensive stop on a Greely corner turned into a counter attack, and Gabby Chessie found a streaking Sadie Waterman, who fired a shot from the left side past Rangers goalie Savannah Lemieux 23 minutes in.
“All year long we’ve just been able to use our speed, and counter attack is a big part of that,” Young said.
O’Grady tied the game 1-1 less than six minutes later when Pray’s cross from the right was knocked away by Gonya, who then was out of position for O’Grady’s eventual put-in.
Pray and O’Grady connected again to complete O’Grady’s hat trick 16 minutes into the second half.
“I think right now we like to hope she’s going to keep it up because she will be marked by so many different people,” Muscadin said. “But we hope that she learns that it’s not just about her. She scores some stuff because she happened to be there at the right time, but she also dished out some great balls, too, to others, so that’s good, too.”
Mollie Obar’s long shot for a goal made it 5-1 Greely three minutes later, and Emily Dillman scored off a Macie Fletcher corner five minutes after that to put Oak Hill back on the scoreboard. Carly Asherman rounded out the scoring for Greely with 11:41 to play.
Gonya made nine saves for the Raiders, with the defense pitching in on another. Lemieux only needed to make one save for the Rangers, who Muscadin said feels like an underdog as their postseason run continues.
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