Southern living: BHS soccer teams test old
EDITOR’S NOTE: In this time of COVID-19, with no sports action, BryantDaily.com will be posting past stories of Bryant athletics either posted on BryantDaily.com (from 2009 to the present) or published in the Bryant Times (from 1998 to 2008).
Soccer is not the first sport this season that Bryant fans might wonder about in regards to the school’s move from the AAAAA-South to the AAAAA-Central Conference. How might have Bryant fared in the South had they still been there.
The soccer teams, however, were the latest to get a gauge on that when they took on old South rivals in recent days.
On Monday, the Hornets and Lady Hornets visited Lake Hamilton where the boys faced the best of the South’s teams, the 11-0-1 Wolves. On Tuesday, the Lady Hornets tested themselves against the best girls team in the South with a trip to El Dorado.
Oh, to be in the South again.
“El Dorado went to the Conway tournament over the weekend and had a real good performance there,” noted Lady Hornets head coach Doug Maxwell. “They tied Springdale, lost 1-0 to Mountain Home and played Conway real competitive. So, we were anxious to see how we stack up.”
Behind three goals from Bridgette McPeak and two by Lindsey Phillips, the Lady Hornets handed the Lady Wildcats at 6-0 defeat. Laura Mackey had a goal and an assist and Mandi Howell had a pair of assists.
“We were up 2-0 at the half,” Maxwell recalled. “The second half, we put the pressure on and started working a lot more combinations. We made them chase the ball a little bit and got four more goals.”
On Monday, at Lake Hamilton, the Lady Hornets swamped the Lady Wolves who have struggled this year and won 7-0.
“The three day weekend showed a little bit early,” Maxwell noted. “It took us about 18 minutes to really get warmed up, get some combinations together.”
The Lady Hornets led 4-0 at the half.
“It was a pretty solid performance for us,” Maxwell stated.
“We lost Paige Breech with a high ankle sprain against Cabot,” noted Maxwell. “She’s our starting center mid, so that really kind of messed up our game plan. She wasn’t available for Central so we really had to switch up our offense a little bit. We played pretty solid. We gave up a really goofy goal about three minutes into the game, just a funny bounce. We came back and tied it up real quick.”
It was 1-1 most of the first half but Central scored again just before the end of the first half.
“The second half, we played pretty solid for the first 20, 25 minutes then they turned it around at the end. We were a little fatigued and a little frustrated that we couldn’t get anything going and gave up a couple of goals.
“But we played pretty well,” Maxwell concluded. “We got to see what we’re up against (in Regionals), saw some things we knew we needed to work on. It was just a couple of breakdowns here and there that was the difference.”
The Lady Hornets are 8-4-2 going into the final week of the regular season.
“I tried to challenge the guys with the fact that they’re unbeaten,” said Hornets coach Bodie Nance. “I told them that that could be us if we still played in the South instead of the Central, just because of the quality of the competition.”
The Hornets played pretty even with the Wolves through most of the first half, Nance said. “They got twice as many shots on goal as we did, playing longball, but we were still in the ballgame,” he noted.
Still, Lake Hamilton managed a 2-0 lead at the half. Bryant, however, scored early in the second half. “Patrick Cheshier got a nice goal with an assist,” recalled the coach.
“That kind of turned the team around with about 20 minutes to go,” he added. “We really played hard the last 20 minutes. We gave up another goal but we didn’t let that deter us. It was 3-1 and we were working hard and we were finally starting to support each other offensively and making some things happen. I wish we had played that hard for 80 minutes. We would’ve won the game. I really thought we’d respond better than we did.”
The Hornets, now 2-8-1 overall, will get another shot at the Wolves on Friday, April 25.
“The kids seemed to be pretty upset that they didn’t win the game,” Nance mentioned. “So, who knows?”
It won’t help that the Hornets lost sophomore Brandon Williams for the rest of the season. “He got stepped on from behind and broke a bone in his foot,” Nance explained. “He played everywhere for us, played a lot of defense lately. He’s one of the fastest kids we’ve got and, lately, we’ve been seeing a lot of speed up front so I’ve been playing him and Steven Bright as defenders. They’ve done a real good job of running with other people’s forwards down the field, doing some good things for us. We’ll definitely miss his speed on the field.”
