By Dylan Wallace
The Trinity girls soccer team hung tough in the opening minutes of the first half against Silver Creek on Tuesday evening at home.
The Cougars created some pressure on offense with a couple of counter attacks, one resulting in a Sarah Lemming cross into the middle of the box that was one Cougar touch away from being put into the back of the net.
Unfortunately, Trinity couldn’t find the back of the net on Tuesday, losing to Silver Creek 7-0.
“It looked very similar to the way we played Providence in our first game. We had them tied 1-1 after 25 minutes,” head coach Thom Hayes said. “We’ve got a young team. We haven’t figured out our groove yet. I noticed a little bit of a landslide when they start scoring we get out of sorts.”
The first Dragon goal came with 20:17 left in the first half when Lydia Wright found an opening in the box and scored.
Silver Creek’s Olivia Johnson had two goals in the first half — one with 12:18 to go and one with 2:31 left.
The Dragons went into halftime with a 4-0 lead after a cross into the box found the right foot of Meredith Wilkinson with 43 seconds left.
The Cougars came out and created some more pressure in the second half and had more possession than they did in the first half.
“We were lacking individual effort,” Hayes said. “We wanted 100 percent effort in the second half. I think we started the half, but then I think we got fatigued.”
The Dragons were able to add three more goals to their total in the second half. Carly Troutman scored with 31:58 left in the half, Bella Scott scored with 9:20 left and the Dragons knocked in one more with under a minute left in the game.
Hayes made a goalie change late in the second half, but it wasn’t because Samantha Enzinger was playing poorly. Enzinger had 20 saves on the day, but Enzinger played defense for Trinity the past few seasons, so Hayes wanted to see her on the backline instead of the net and might use that going forward.
“She played defense the last two years for me and did great,” Hayes said. “We may need her out on defense more.”
Trinity had five shots on goal and two corners on the day.
Going forward, the Cougars will look to make improvements ahead of their next match on Thursday at Franklin.
“I’m trying to get the understanding of defensive awareness,” Hayes said. “We have a lot of inexperienced players. It’s just working on that with some patience, so that we can create those counter attack opportunities.”