The Bluejay girls fell to 0-2 on the season with last Tuesday’s 10-0 defeat under the lights at SPASH. It was their second Valley game against a top opponent.
“Well, it’s another rough start to the season for Merrill soccer,” MHS coach Steph Nelson said. “Go figure with cancellations, we get to see the top two teams in conference right off the bat, but oh well, gotta play them some time right?
“We started out definitely very slow; they scored their first goal around the two minute mark with another one or two to follow not too long after. We had a hard time marking up on all of their offensive people that they were sending in, that coupled with a couple mistakes, that takes us to 6-0 at halftime.
“Towards the end of the second half, we were really starting to move the ball well offensively. We’ve been working a lot of passing drills in practice lately and the girls even said how much more effective and how much easier offense was when they were doing the things that we worked on. Unfortunately, we only got the ball to the other keeper one time (not even a shot), but we were getting so much closer.
“I think once we start playing teams that aren’t the best in our conference (whether it’s non-conference or just not the #1 and #2 teams in our conference) we’re going to start scoring goals. We have some great ideas, but now we have to work on execution.”
Casey Jahn and Jamie Clemens scored four goals apiece for the Panthers, while Abby Bohanski dished three assists.
Morganne Noland made five saves and allowed six goals in the first half, and Taylor Hudzinski had 8 saves with four goals allowed in the second half.