STARKVILLE — Throw out the first half.
As far as Mary Nagy is concerned, don’t put too much stock into her team’s first 40 minutes Saturday against Starkville. After arriving home from Philadelphia at 12:30 a.m. Saturday following a key region victory against Neshoba Central, Nagy and assistant coach Will Taylor didn’t feel New Hope did any of the things it works on every day at practice.
“At halftime, coach Will said, ‘Here is everything that needs to be fixed,’ ” Nagy said. ” ‘ You’re making lead passes. You can’t make lead passes against a quality team like this. You have to play to feet. You have to go to the open spaces.’ Everything that we preach, everything that we have practiced over and over again we weren’t doing.”
Starkville High coach Anna Albritton had an entirely different sentiment. The Lady Yellow Jackets’ coach liked her players’ ability to string together passes and to keep the Lady Trojans back on their heels for the first half.
“We dominated the entire game,” Albritton said.
The second half followed a different script.
Buoyed by a late charge, New Hope capitalized on a penalty kick and then added another goal in the final few minutes to salvage a 2-2 tie against Starkville. Effie Morrison converted a penalty kick in the 54th minute after Starkville was called for a hand ball in the box. The goal appeared to give New Hope (7-1-1) confidence as it slowly started to apply more pressure and gain even more possession. Morrison and Sam Vogel had the Lady Trojans’ best attempts to tie the match. Vogel’s bid came off a corner kick by Morrison that Sydney Brocksmith headed back to the middle off the far post, but goalkeeper Camryn Dawkins made the save.
Nagy said her team’s response came following a halftime conversation in which she and assistant coach Will Taylor went down a grocery list of items the team didn’t execute in the opening half.
“There are no excuses. They just weren’t doing their jobs,” Nagy said. “At halftime, we had to make some corrections, and it took them about five or 10 minutes into the second half and constant direction from the sidelines to do what you are taught to do: at the feet, at the feet, let me here you communicate. We didn’t hear a lot of communication at the beginning. The communication started, the ball to the feet started, they were a little more aggressive and demanded the ball where it should be and things got better.”
The pressure finally paid off in the final two minutes, as Dawkins made a diving parry on a shot by Vogel. Dawkins’ save re-directed the ball to the middle of the field, where Morrison tracked it down. The junior midfielder knew she didn’t have a lot of time, so she turned her body almost perpendicular to the goal and managed to get enough on a quick, right-footed shot to the lower left corner that tied the match.
“I told the girls when we were done that this is a game of minutes and you play until it ends,” Nagy said. “We told the girls, ‘The first 55 minutes you didn’t play well and that in the last 25 minutes you came on and played New Hope soccer. We’re very proud of you for that because you didn’t lay down and die and that you knew you still could come out and score and that you have every bit as much talent as they did and you just didn’t show it when you came out.’ ”
Starkville had something to do with that, too. The Lady Yellow Jackets (6-2-1), who were coming off a 10-0 victory against Columbus on Friday, dictated the tempo on the soggy pitch with a one-touching passing game that moved the ball in and out and made the most of open space. Cailee Helen McClain and Noa Hardin set the tone in the third minute with some nifty combination play on the right wing. Megan Moorhead and Anna Underwood gave goalkeeper McKenzie Harvey her first test by working to create a scoring chance that forced her to come off her line and make a sliding save.
Things got so bad for New Hope in the first half that one New Hope player shouted to her teammates, “C’mon black, let’s get it on the other side.”
Following a shot off the crossbar by Underwood and some more combination play by Underwood and Hannah Laird that they punctuated with a hand clap, Starkville finally cashed in with some of its best passing of the afternoon. Kate Mattox and Hardin started the play by moving into the attacking third. Hardin found Coleman Bergstrom on the right wing, who found Underwood in the middle. Underwood finished to the lower right corner to make it 1-0.
A little more than three minutes later, Laird capitalized on pressure by Underwood to collect a loose ball that went uncleared after a save by Harvey to make it 2-0.
“We dominated,” Albritton said. “I think we’re the better team. We showed that the entire game.”
Unfortunately, Starkville couldn’t get a third goal to give it an even bigger cushion. Underwood had another solid scoring chance in the 44th minute, but Harvey made a save and defender Miaya Richardson cleared the ball from in front of the goal line before the Lady Yellow Jackets could pounce.
Starkville continued to pressure and to hold possession in the second half, but it didn’t benefit from a pair of yellow cards that were handed out just before Morrison’s second goal. Starkville lost senior defender Katelyn Swiderski on the play, while New Hope lost forward Farris Bradley.
“Our girl should have been pulled. Their girl should have been pulled, too,” Albritton said. “That was unfortunate. … Those situations right there, it was just an unjust situation in a sense for our girls. We didn’t respond. I think we let our emotions get the better of us and the they were able to punch one in.”
Said Nagy, “I agree with coach Albritton. They did come out and dominate. I don’t think they dominated the entire game. I thought the second half was a totally different game, and we did our part.
“The two goals we gave them were freebies. On one, our midfielder didn’t drop back and it gave them a totally open shot. On the second, the goalie came out and rather than booting the ball out and clearing it, it just sat. While they played better than us in the first half, they weren’t deserving. On the flip side, yes, they did dominate play in the first half, but we earned our goals in the second half.”
n On Friday, the New Hope girls beat Neshoba Central 4-0 in a Class 5A, Region 3 match. Ashley Martian had two goals, Vogel had one, and Tuva Rasmussen had another. The victory helped the Lady Trojans clinch a playoff spot thanks to a sweep of the series against the Lady Rockets. New Hope will take on Germantown on Friday in a match that will determine which teams wins the region.
Also Friday, Starkville defeated Columbus 10-0. Laird had four goals, McClain had three goals, Harper Laird had two goals, and Abigail Wise had the other goal.
“Last night, we were a little bit sloppy and we talked to them and told them they had to come with their ‘A’ game today, and I really think they did,” Albritton said. “Starkville dominated New Hope. It is unfortunate at the end that all of that had to materialize and our emotions got the best of us.”
Starkville will play host to Madison Central on Tuesday.
Follow Dispatch sports editor Adam Minichino on Twitter @ctsportseditor.
Adam Minichino is the former Sports Editor for The Commercial Dispatch.
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