Sectional setback

ARCADIA — It took the Patriots less than six minutes to get on the board.

The lead lasted just seven minutes.

Then, in a span of 4:16, Liz Reece and the Tigers tilted the game in their favor.

The Patriots never recovered.

Jay County High School’s girls soccer team never managed to fully contain the Yorktown sophomore as she scored a natural hat trick on her way to a four-goal effort Thursday in an 8-4 Yorktown victory in the Class 2A Sectional 24 semifinal at Hamilton Heights.

“We felt like we didn’t play well the first time around,” said Yorktown coach Tim Ashton, whose team lost to Jay County 5-2 on Sept. 20. “We had some people out, people in different spots.

“We were able to put it all together last week. We wanted it bad.”

Yorktown (10-6), which is the three-time defending sectional champion, advances to the title game at 7 p.m. Saturday against host Hamilton Heights, which defeated Delta 11-1 in the second semifinal later Tuesday night.

Jay County, meanwhile, falls to 9-4-2 and exits the postseason in its opening game for the third consecutive season.

“They came out, Yorktown did, with more intensity than the first game,” said JCHS coach Giles Laux. “We didn’t.”

His answer for the difference in Reece’s play from the first game, during which she had the Tigers’ only two goals, was even more brief.

“She got open a lot more,” he said.

After Jay County senior Hannah Phillips put the Patriots out front 1-0 in the sixth minute, Reece netted the equalizer seven minutes later. Roghan Brashear took the ball up the left side of the field and passed to Reece in the middle. Reece put a shot in the right side of the net to tie the game.

Not even two minutes later Reece weaved her way through the Patriot defense and again went to the right side of the net for her second goal. Then, 2:18 after her second goal, she completed the hat trick on an assist from Sierra Marvin.

“I can’t say anything about her,” Ashton said of Reece, smiling, in awe of her performance. Reece’s fourth goal pushed the score to 5-1 with 13:02 remaining in the half, just 36 seconds after Lea Alexander made it 4-1.

It was a combination of Jay County turnovers in the midfield and crisp, clean passes that allowed Reece and her teammates to get the opportunities they did.

Many of the Patriots’ possessions were short lived, and they were caught going the other way chasing the Tigers on the offensive.

“Their passing was very good tonight,” Laux said. “That is probably the biggest difference (from the first game). Their passing was phenomenal the whole game.

“If it didn’t go to their player it went beside their player … Our passing was not as crisp.”

It was an aspect Ashton said the Tigers had been drilling for a while.

“We’ve really worked on the midfield and it paid off, I guess,” he said. “It takes a person like Liz though.”

Anhely Montes scored late in the first half for Jay County, which never got closer than three goals the rest of the way.

Marvin tallied a goal in the 52nd minute to make it 6-2 Yorktown, and less than nine minutes later Karlie Bullard tallied her 12th goal of the year on a shot deep in the right corner to bring it to 6-3.

With more than a dozen minutes to play, Marvin got her second goal to make it 7-3, but 34 seconds later JCHS senior Kendra Muhlenkamp scored, bringing the score to 7-4.

It was the 60th and final goal of her career, as she fell three short of tying 2016 graduate Gabbie Mann’s school record of 63.

From there, Jay County kept up the pressure but wasn’t able to trim the margin. Instead, Yorktown’s Ashton Frost scored the final goal of the game with 1:58 to play.

“We wanted to come back here and play Saturday,” Laux said. “They always have the fight in them. I thought if we could have cut it to two, I thought maybe we would have been able to turn that corner on the confidence.

“We came out in the second half playing better than we did in the first half. Yorktown kept up the intensity. My hat’s off to them they played extremely well.”