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The Thomson Lady Dogs fell to Morgan County in their nonregional away opener Wednesday, by a score of 9-1.
“I’m not upset about this game at all,” head coach Jessica Ruark said. “We have a young squad, and they’re learning, and I think they learned a lot in this game. And I’m happy that we scored a goal.”
Morgan County got on the board early, scoring their first goal at the 37:56 mark. Morgan County went on to score four more unanswered goals in the first 21 minutes of the first half.
The strong play by Morgan County continued in the second half, scoring two additional goals before Haley Oubre made a goal for Thomson with 5:17 remaining in the game.
“Brea (Boutwell) took the ball to the middle of the field and crossed it to me,” Oubre said. “I caught it with my left foot and saw a defender coming at me, and I just took the shot real quick and it went in the net. I really wanted to make a goal in this game, and was so happy after it went in I just fell down afterwards, and had to rely on my teammates to pick me back up.”
Morgan County would score twice more in the game to bring the final score to 9-1.
“They probably shouldn’t have scored those last two goals,” Ruark admitted. “I’m not happy about the other goals they made either, but we really shouldn’t have allowed those last two.”
Ruark had plenty of praise for her young teame.
“We’ve got a lot of speed,” she said. “It’s just a matter of finding where to use it. I’ve got some girls from the freshman group who really want to play, and they showed it tonight by stepping up and really playing hard. It’s a work in progress, and we need to work on crossing and on defense. But our goalie, Chelsey Smith, did an excellent job tonight. It was her first actual game, and I think she did really well. Betty Jones did good on defense, she has speed and quickness to get to the ball, and Anna Carrington was amazing because I could put her anywhere and she did exactly what I needed her to do. We just got outplayed tonight, that’s all there is to it.”
The Lady Dogs next travel to Lincoln County today for another nonregional game. Their first home game is Feb. 28 vs. Cross Creek. Game time at The Brickyard is 5:30.
