Jay knocks off Heritage

Jay County wanted to move on from its 4-0 loss Tuesday at Richmond.
It only needed 123 seconds to forget about the defeat.
Gabbie Mann scored 2:03 into the game and added two more scores as the Jay County High School girls soccer team dismantled the visiting Heritage Patriots, 5-1.
“The girls, they didn’t want to feel what they felt Tuesday night,” said JCHS coach Giles Laux, whose team earned a victory in its first conference contest in four years. “They wanted to feel this moment. It’s phenomenal (to win) out here at home.”
The host Patriots (1-0-1, 1-0 Allen County Athletic Conference) jumped on its new conference opponent early.
Then they did it often.
Jay County got the first shot on goal just 23 seconds into the game. Nearly two minutes later, Mann struck for her first goal on a through pass from Mariah Bailey.
Mann dribbled the ball into the left side of the 18-yard box, delivered a shot to the net which deflected off Heritage goalkeeper Erica Franz, and Mann buried her secondary shot for her first goal of the season.
“We were attacking from the get-go,” Laux said. “Right off the bat we were down in the corner crossing and we knew then that the girls came to play.”
It also helped that Jay County was able to take advantage of a young, inexperienced team in Heritage (0-1-1, 0-1 ACAC).
“We’ve got two girls playing back on defense (that) this is their first year,” said Heritage coach Dean Trainer, whose 2013 squad graduated 10 seniors and went 15 games before experiencing its first loss. “(We’re) trying to teach them what to do and where to be.”
Stormi Canterbury put Jay County up 2-0 five minutes after Mann’s first goal. Carmen Lopez sent a through pass to Canterbury, who ran past a Heritage defender and into the right side of the penalty area. The Patriot sophomore cut in toward Franz near the 6-yard box and kicked the ball into the right side of the goal.
In the 12th minute, Catherine Dunn joined the scoring barrage.
The senior captain ran up the left side of the field with the ball and fired a shot at the goal with two Heritage defenders behind her. Her shot plunked the crossbar and past the goal line, but the English on the ball brought it back out of the goal. Lopez and Canterbury followed the play and Lopez kicked it in to make sure it was a goal, but the linesman had already signaled Dunn’s shot went in.
Mann notched her second goal of the game fewer than two minutes later when she stole the ball from Heritage’s Veronica Hare about 30 yards out. The JCHS junior dribbled straight up the middle and put a shot into the left side of the net past Franz.
Jay County controlled the ball in the first half, using effective cross and drop passes to get open looks, which Laux said it had worked on in practice Wednesday.
“The passing and the communication was phenomenal,” he said. “(The Patriots) did both and they go hand-in-hand. I don’t want to say it was perfect, but it was much, much better.
“The girls were playing heads-up soccer. They made it look easy (and) they worked their tail off.”
At the same time, Jay’s defense was able to limit the Heritage possessions. Lexie Myers, Emma Laux and a rotation of center back players Megan Smith and Emily Muhlenkamp didn’t allow Heritage to get many opportunities throughout the game.
“Lexie and Emma are great anchors,” Laux said. “They are not only quick, strong and have a lot of heart, they’re soccer smart and they can help the inside defensive players play.”
Heritage broke the shut out late in the first half, though.
Karson Gardner’s corner kick in the 28th minute hit Emma Laux in the stomach — knocking the wind out of her — and trickled into the net past goalkeeper Lilly Rogers.
It was the only bright spot for the visiting Patriots, as it was part of a stretch of 15 minutes Heritage was able to get a keep possession. However, momentum quickly shifted back in favor of the home team in the final minutes of the half as Jay County kept the ball in its offensive zone.
It didn’t take long into the second half — just five minutes, 37 seconds — for Mann to complete the hat trick.
After Canterbury was fouled on the left side of the field between the 18-yard box and the sideline, she sent her free kick to the middle to an open Mann, who placed her left-footed shot into the right side of the net.
Heritage had two more chances to score in the second half — one on a penalty kick that Lydia Oberley hit right at Rogers in the center of the goal and another on a corner kick Rogers nabbed out of mid-air — but both came up empty.
With its season-opening loss in the rearview, Jay County played like a team poised to win, and it came down to what Laux told the girls before the opening whistle.
“I had a great talk with them,” he said about telling his team to focus on the game at hand and not what happened Tuesday. “I told (them) ‘Show the other Patriots what these Patriots can do.”