Columbus North’s Paige Terry (11) celebrates with teammates after scoring the game’s first goal against Columbus East Wednesday at BCSC Soccer Complex.
Nicholas Shaw | For The Republic
After settling for 0-0 ties with Columbus East the past two years, Paige Terry was glad to finally put Columbus North on the scoreboard against the Olympians Wednesday night.
Terry’s header off a corner kick from Rachel Merritt 12 minutes into the game broke the ice for the Bull Dogs and kick-started them to a 6-0 girls soccer win against the Olympians at the BCSC Soccer Complex.
“We tied 0-0 for two years, so it was good to finally get the one that got it 1-0,” Terry said. “It helped get our confidence up, and then I think we really played as a team and it helped a lot.”
After Terry’s first tally, North (3-1) didn’t score again until the 33rd minute when Avery Baker finished a pass from Rachel Fulp. The Bull Dogs led 2-0 at halftime.
Baker added her second goal about a minute-and-a-half into the second half on a rebound off a Fulp shot to make it 3-0.
East (0-5) had its best scoring opportunity a couple minutes later when Sophie Glick dribbled nearly the length of the field, and the Olympians ended up with a corner kick. East got a shot off the corner — its only shot of the game — but it was saved by North keeper Gabby Revell.
The Bull Dogs added to their lead in the 57th minute when Emerson Chambers scored off an assist from Riley Sims. Terry added her second goal of the night in the 60th minute, and Allison Kolhouse capped the scoring in he 67th minute when she headed in a corner kick from Merritt.
“I think we played together,” Baker said. “It’s a really tough game with the high stress levels, and it’s crazy with all the people. I think we just put it together. The effort was there with the whole team, and we worked together. We had 14 corner kicks, which is the most that we’ve had, and we scored three off of that, which is really amazing because we’ve been working on that. I’m just really proud of everyone. We showed out tonight.”
North finished with a 27-1 shot advantage, putting 17 shots on goal to one for the Olympians. East’s Emma Christie recorded 16 saves.
Danika Hoehn played the first half in goal for the Bull Dogs and did not face a shot. Revell played the second half and posted the one save.
“A hot night, the goal was to get as many players into the game as we could,” North coach David Young said. “We did sub five or six players at a time, which ultimately broke them down, wore them down, and kind of the end result was seeing it on the scoreboard.”
The Olympians now have a week to practice before travelling to Providence on Sept. 5.
“We’re getting better,” East coach Ilya Schwartzman said. “The effort is there. We’re picking up on some understanding of defensive assignments. We still have a long way to go, but defensively and offensively, we’re trying to connect and create new offensive opportunities. We were to create a couple of times tonight, where in the last couple of games, we weren’t able to create any offensive opportunities. We’re getting better, but we certainly were undermanned tonight.”
North, which will host Floyd Central on Saturday afternoon. The Bull Dogs now have recorded three consecutive shutouts following a season-opening 3-1 loss at Center Grove.
“Three shutouts in a row, Saturday will be an important game for us against Floyd Central to kind of test us a little bit,” Young said. “Ultimately, what it comes down to is, we have really young players up top for us scoring goals, and (Center Grove) kind of smacked us in the face a little bit on who we thought we were. Then, we kind of had to rethink what we were doing and we’ve seen the scoreline the last few games from it.”
