Girls soccer: Flames continue descent in league standings with loss to Rams By David Witte/News-Sentinel sports writer Lodi News-Sentinel |
The Lodi Flames varsity girls soccer team dropped out of the top three in the Tri-City Athletic League with a 1-0 loss to the St. Mary’s Rams despite outshooting the Rams 15-6 on Tuesday.
After the Flames defense allowed no shots in the first half, St. Mary’s Julia Delucchi collected a pass from Elisa Prieto on the right side just two minutes into the second half and floated a shot over the outstretched hands of Lodi goalkeeper Mary McKinney and just under the crossbar.
It was the second straight scoreless game for Lodi’s offense.
“It’s kind of ironic, because the other night, we were making the passes, we weren’t making the runs,” Lodi coach Tim Stutz said. “Tonight it felt like we were making the runs, and not making the pass soon enough.”
While St. Mary’s counterattack offense produced little to speak of in the first half, Lodi’s slow-building attack kept most of the play on the Rams’ side of the field, but the finish never materialized.
“It would have been nice to have this,” Lodi midfielder Carole Thomas said. “We were in first at one point, and we’ve been struggling the last couple of games, and it’s brought us down, so it would have been nice to have this win. But we just have to play really hard the next games.”
St. Mary’s goalkeeper Taylor Elliott finished with seven saves to keep Lodi off the board, including a one-handed airborne slap of a Thomas shot at about the 70th minute.
“I think that when another team scores, you kind of get discouraged, and it’s really hard to motivate yourself to pick it back up and get it back,” Thomas said. “I think that’s what we were trying to do, but it just kind of fell apart.”
Lodi keeper McKinney, who spent much of the first half standing at the top of the box and rubbing her shoulders in the bitter cold, blocked three shots.
“We were trying some different things that we haven’t tried before, and it didn’t work out too well,” St. Mary’s coach Mark Kusanovich said about the first half. “Fortunately, the coach is smart enough to make some half-time adjustments and we had a little better second half. We changed our system, and we had some injured players we were trying to get through, and they couldn’t do it, so we had to go to some reserve players.”
That included Salma Flores, last year’s leading scorer for the Rams, who played on the back line with a back injury before being replaced after the break.
The Rams pushed the pace in the second half, while the defense helped Elliott out of a couple of tight spots in the last 20 minutes, when Lodi re-energized and played with a sense of urgency.
“You could see the end we were trying to kick the ball over the top and we weren’t able to do it,” Stutz said. “We have four forwards, let’s kick it over the top, and they’re playing short passes.”
Lodi also has its walking wounded, with three starters on the bench — two with possible concussion symptoms and one with a foot injury. It’s something every team is fighting during this year’s 15-game league slate.
“Every game in this conference this year, the way it’s aligned, is big. If you let down for a game, you lose,” Kusanovich said. “I’ve coached in this league for 25 years, and right now I think this is the toughest league going in Northern California.
“This is going to go down to the last game, no doubt about it.”
The loss dropped Lodi (4-6-3, 4-3-2 TCAL) into fourth place and vaulted St. Mary’s (11-5-2, 5-2-2 TCAL) into second place.
Junior Varsity
St. Mary’s 1, Lodi 0
The Rams scored in last 10 minutes to pull off the victory over the Flames.
Shelby Hand had six saves for the Flames and Annie Jaeger, Destany Hoover, Kristin Sotelo, Erica Fernandez and Tabitha Little had solid games for the Flames (3-5-1 Tri-City Athletic League).