Patriot girls rout Starfires for ACAC championship

One shot zipped just outside the left post.
One got past the keeper only to find the foot of a defender just before it reached the goal line.
One sailed just over the top of the crossbar, and another caromed off of it.
The Patriots fired shot after shot during the first half Saturday, just missing on a serious of opportunities. Eventually the flood gates opened, and a deluge of goals brought with it a conference championship.
Jay County scored twice in the final 10 minutes of the first half and added five more goals in the second as it secured its first Allen County Athletic Conference title with an 8-1 victory over the visiting South Adams Starfires.
“I think it’s awesome, finally. Finally,” said JCHS coach Giles Laux, who distributed ACAC championship T-shirts as part of the post-game celebration. “I wish we had Leo still in there. We wanted to beat them. But we’ll take this, this year. We’ll take this.”
Sophomore Lucy Laux racked up four goals for the second time this season to lead the Patriots as they completed their conference sweep, and Gabbie Mann, Breea Liette, Sophie Bader and Emma Laux added one apiece. The Patriots outscored their ACAC foes 25-2 this season — the other wins came by scores of 7-1 over Heritage and 10-0 over Woodlan — with Lucy Laux scoring 11 of those goals.
The only tally for South Adams came after the game was well in hand when Lexi Dellinger connected on a penalty kick.
“They have decided that they’re not a good team, so mentally the second the other team scores their heads are down, they’re done, they’ve lost. And that’s something that we have been facing this whole season,” said South Adams coach Christi Paulson, whose team fell to 2-6 overall and 0-1 in the conference. “Today was probably the first day we saw frustration. There was actually anger that we were losing. They’re starting to recognize that they’re a good team and that they know they can play better than that.”
Sophie Bader gave the Patriots (5-1-1, 3-0 ACAC) the early lead when she took a pass from Lucy Laux and sent it to the right corner at the 22:06 mark of the first half. But then they saw a sequence of shots barely miss making it to the back of the net.
Emma Laux fired one off the crossbar. A follow by Mariah Bailey was saved, and another shot from Sophie Bader slipped through goalie Anna Nussbaum’s hands and just over the crossbar. A Lucy Laux shot off of a Stormi Canterbury corner went just high, and Canterbury then had a shot miss barely to the left.
But Canterbury set up the next scoring chance with a corner kick to the middle that Lucy Laux was able to send past Anna Nussbaum for a 2-0 lead with 10 minutes to go in the half. And five minutes later Mann got free behind the Starfire defense and tapped an easy score to the left corner.
There was no slowing down the Jay County offense in the second half, with Laux scoring twice in the first seven minutes off of assists from Bailey and Kayla Ferguson.
Her sister Emma took a pass from Alex Bader and ripped a 20-yard goal at the 24:50 mark, and then Lucy Laux scored again on a header off of a Bailey corner kick for her second four-goal game of the season.
Corners were a staple of the JCHS offense Saturday, with Bailey and Canterbury consistently setting up their teammates with scoring opportunities.
“We just try to get them in the box and hope one of the girls puts a head on it and gets it in the goal,” said Bailey. “When Lucy put that header in I was just like, ‘Yes, Lucy.’”
A couple of underclassmen worked together on the final Patriot goal, with freshman Hannah Phillips pushing the ball up the middle of the field and then passing right to Liette. The sophomore dribbled toward the right post and then sent a shot to the left corner with 5:57 on the clock.
A minute later Jay County was called for a tackle inside the 18-yard box, and Dellinger hit her penalty kick to the left corner past goalie Lilly Rogers.
South Adams had possession on its offensive end for about the first three minutes of the game. But from that point on they never moved much beyond midfield as the defensive line of Megan Smith, Alli Ruiz and the Muhlenkamps — Kendra, Brianna and Emily — consistently turned the Starfires away.
“Even individually our defenders are spectacular, but when they come together as a team I don’t know what else we could expect from them,” said Bader. “They work hard every day at practice and it shows on the field.”
The conference title was the first for the Patriots since they won the final Olympic Athletic Conference championship in 2009. That came with wins of 1-0 over Connersville, 2-1 over Anderson Highland and 5-0 over Muncie Southside.