Coach Thom Hayes said the Scottsburg girls soccer team did a better job of executing its plays and playing defense than the Cougars and as a result, the visitors scored a 2-1 win on the Trinity Lutheran field Monday afternoon.

Trinity outshot Scottsburg 8-7 in the first half, and the Cougars held a 1-0 lead on a goal by Emma Myers 22:27 left in the first half.

Scottsburg turned up its level of play in the second half, outshooting the Cougars 20-5 in the final 40 minutes.

“The attacking was a result of them winning the 50-50 balls. They maintained possession. When we cleared the ball out, we cleared it right to them it seemed like, and they just came right back,” Hayes said. “We couldn’t get anything going on offense. Our team is capable of scoring on this team, but not if they dominate and we don’t get the ball out of our end of the field.”

Neither team was able to attack in the opening minutes until a Scottsburg player had a shot on goal at 32:50 only to be denied by Cougars goalie Samantha Enzinger. Another Scottsburg girl gained possession of the ball on the rebound but her attack was wide of the goal.

Myers had three strong attacks in a three-minute span of the first half. She had an attack that was stopped by the Scottsburg goalie at 25:50, Myers had another kick hit the side of the goal, and she scored at 22:27 and the score remained 1-0 at the half.

Scottsburg tied the score on a goal by Bella Campbell at 38:27 of the second half.

Myers had an excellent chance to break the tie when her attack hit the crossbar with 11:55 remaining.

Haley Thomas scored the winning goal with 10:01 remaining. Enzinger had 11 saves.

Hayes said in the second half, “We just couldn’t get anything going on offense. I would liked to have seen much more of an effort, but the other side of that is early in the second half one of our players went down and we only had one sub, and they were constantly putting people in so we were more tired than they were.”

The Cougars started the match with 12 players and had to play the final 25 minutes without any extra players.

Trinity (2-6) will host Salem at 6 p.m. Thursday for senior night.

“We can’t teach effort to go after and win the ball. Down in Corydon (Saturday) they did. Corydon beat us pretty handily (7-1) but we played a better game. We can’t have letdowns like this,” Hayes said. “Part of it is being tired but the other side of that is they’ve got to want it. We’ll work in getting them to be motivated.”