Lincoln girls soccer suffers fourth straight loss
Published 3:27 pm Thursday, October 6, 2016
LINCOLN’S Jenna King dribbles the ball toward goal in the first half of the Lady Patriots’ 6-1 loss. King scored Lincoln’s only goal on the play.
STANFORD — Franklin County’s girls’ soccer team sits at the top of the 11th Region with a 13-4 record. But, even though the 11th Region is usually considered one of the state’s toughest regions, does that mean the Lady Flyers are “all that?”
Lincoln girls’ coach Leanne Kirkpatrick was not that impressed.
“Coming into it we looked at their record and saw how well they’d done, but we came out that first half and watched them. Their coach did say they were missing their best all-around player, but I still don’t see it. I don’t know how they’ve done it.”
Kirkpatrick’s take on the visitors didn’t change even after Franklin County handed Lincoln County a 6-1 loss, the team’s fourth loss in a row.
“They transition really well and I’m sure they catch teams off guard that way. They had five on their front line every time and five on their back line every time. That’s hard to shoot against. That’s hard to defend,” she said. “But other than that they didn’t outskill us. They just outplayed us.”
Quinn May was the workhorse for Franklin in the game as the junior midfielder punched in five of the Lady Flyers’ six goals.
The two teams were locked in a defensive standoff for most of the first half, with Franklin getting a better test of the mettle of the Lincoln “D” by controlling the ball.
Franklin outshot Lincoln 10-2 in the first half, with May delivering a one-two punch late in the half to give the Lady Flyers the goals they needed for the win. May, who took most of Franklin’s 23 shots on goal in the game, finally got the ball past Lincoln keeper Dallis Brown with 8 minutes, 44 seconds to go in the half. Thirty-eight seconds later, May tallied her second goal for a 2-0 lead.
There would be a total of four goals scored in the final 8:44 of the first half. Jenna King got Lincoln on the scoreboard with 4:23 on the clock, dribbling the ball between Franklin defenders then booting it in on Lady Flyer keeper Jenna Ruebens to make it 2-1.
The margin would be 3-1 at the half, though, with Olivia Hagg lofting in a shot behind Brown at the 2:24 mark.
Lincoln (4-8-1) had only two shots on goal the first half. The stat was the same in the second half.
Meanwhile, Franklin pummeled Brown with 13 more shots on goal, again scoring three goals – all by May.
May struck just four minutes into the second half, then added goals at the 28:18 mark and the 6:49 mark.
“That first half we could have played better. We played a pretty solid 30 minutes. There were 10 every now and then in different spots that we didn’t quite connect. Then that second half they scored early and we were done. We quit,” said Kirkpatrick. “There’s nothing Brett (Deshon, assistant coach) or I could do about that.”
Lincoln’s lackluster effort in the second half caught Kirkpatrick off guard.
“We’ve been a second-half team all this season and we just had no fight today. We just didn’t want it,” she said. “They scored an early (goal) one the second half and we didn’t decide to come back from it. It wasn’t our day to win. Their heads were down. My head was down because of the way they were playing. It was frustrating to watch.”
And Kirkpatrick said her gut told her that it wasn’t Lincoln’s day to win.
“Usually coming out of the half I feel that we’re going to take it. And this one I didn’t. They were all down.”
With the regular season reaching its end this week and the postseason looming, Kirkpatrick says Lincoln needs to pick its play back up.
“We’ve had a lot of games here recently so I know we’re tired, but heading into district we need to turn this around or it’s going to keep plummeting down. We need to pick a peak and it’s time to do it now.”
The Lady Patriots’ run of losses grew to five Monday at Nicholasville as the LadyJaguars defeated Lincoln 5-1.
