Girls get few chances on offense in loss

BERNE — Spending most of the time on their heels, the Starfires didn’t get very many chances offensively.
And when they did, they simply ran out of steam.
The South Adams High School girls soccer team had very little time with the ball across midfield and its defense couldn’t keep Norwell from scoring in a 7-1 loss Saturday morning to the visiting Knights.
“We were playing defense the whole time,” said SAHS coach Chad Mitchell, whose team hosts New Haven at 5 p.m. tonight before a 10 a.m. meeting Saturday with Jay County. “We would kick the ball out and it would be just put right back in.”
South Adams (2-2) only had six scoring chances, converting one in the final 10 minutes of the game, but was backed up on its defensive side of the field a majority of the time.
Norwell’s Molly Wendel scored in the fifth minute, and continued to get chances against goalkeeper Anna Nussbaum and the SAHS defense.
“I actually like (being on defense) because we like to play a physical game,” said Mitchell. “We just didn’t get a lot of the good bounces that we normally get.”
That’s how the Knights got their second goal of the game with 1 minute, 54 seconds, remaining in the half. Natalya Haddix had the ball deep on the right side of the field and sent a cross pass toward the net that bounced over the leg of a SAHS defender. Taylor Byerly was in the 18-yard box, and took a left-footed shot past Nussbaum into the right side of the net.
Brook Lobsiger and Haddix added goals in the second half to give Norwell a 4-0 lead before South Adams finally broke the shutout. Lexi Dellinger, who was often marked by two or three Norwell defenders, found the back of the net on a perfectly placed free kick.
From just outside the right of the penalty area, the junior lofted a shot over a wall of Knights to the far side of the net that plunked off the post past goalkeeper Regan Konuch.
“It was beautiful,” said Mitchell. “It is something we’ve actually practiced this last week is taking free kicks against walls. She put a nice move on the ball … nice and easy.”
Norwell coach John Proegler said during the game it was a perfect goal, comparing it to a swish in basketball.
But just as it seemed like momentum could shift in favor of the Starfires, the Knights grabbed it right back and the Starfires were on defense yet again.
“We didn’t have a lot of good opportunities and by the time we would get the ball in a good spot we might have been a little gassed coming forward and helping out,” Mitchell said.
Haddix scored a natural hat trick — all within the final eight minutes of the game — to push her total to four goals for the game and Norwell’s lead to the eventual final score of 7-1. She put a shot over Nussbaum’s head from 30 yards out in the 72nd minute, won a free ball on the right side of the box and kicked it into the left side of the net in the 76th minute and added her fourth goal on a penalty kick with 3:08 remaining.