by Ken Brown
DANVILLE – The Danville-Twinfield-Cabot (CCSU) girls’ soccer team notched their first win of the season with a resounding win over Blue Mountain last week, but couldn’t carry that momentum with them on the road against a tough Oxbow team.
Twinfield-Cabot’s Carley Mancini made her first goal of the season a game-winner to help CCSU pull away from Blue Mountain in the second half for a 5-2 home win last Tuesday.
Jordan Alley scored unassisted midway through the first half to give the Lady Bucks a 1-0 advantage heading into the break.
Twinfield-Cabot’s Ida Astick found the equalizer two minutes into the second half for her first goal of the season with her new team.
Lauren Joncas gave the Lady Bears their first lead of the match five minutes later and Mancini buried the eventual game-winner unassisted at the 58-minute mark.
Sloane Morse gave CCSU some insurance unassisted with 11 minutes left in regulation and fed Eliska Siebenbrunner for a 5-1 lead four minutes later.
Alley tallied her second goal of the match for Blue Mountain a minute later to end the scoring on the day. Leah Klark was strong in net for the Lady Bears, making seven stops on the day. Felicity Sulham recorded 13 saves and Karli Blood had a pair of assists in the loss as Blue Mountain fell to 0-4.
“I thought we controlled play throughout the first half, but Sulham was tough to crack, making several tough saves on some quality shots just under the crossbar. We did a good job of winning the shot battle 21-4 in the first half and we did a lot of the same after the break, but were able to finish some nicely constructed plays into goals. My girls were making fine passing plays throughout the match, so it was a little weird scoring 4 unassisted goals in a row, but it was a product of winning 50-50 balls on the offensive side that caught them out of defensive position,” said head coach Spencer Morse.
Natalie Spear tallied the game-winner midway through the first half to power Oxbow to a 2-0 home win over the Lady Bears on Friday.
Mackenzie Pearl buried a feed from Maggie Ellsworth just before halftime to give Oxbow a two-goal advantage and their defense would make it stand up.
Klark made three saves in the loss for CCSU. Caleigh Bean preserved her third shutout of the season with three stops of her own as the Lady Olympians improved to 3-4. Oxbow is currently in the middle of the pack of a highly competitive Division III.
“It was a hard-fought back-and-forth game for both teams. We may have been a little intimidated in the first half with their physicality, but I thought we made a lot of improvement to our game in the last 40 minutes,” said Morse.
CCSU will host a red-hot Hazen Union team on Wednesday and will hit the road for a match against Winooski on Saturday afternoon. They are scheduled to host Division II Missisquoi Valley next Tuesday.
