MONMOUTH — The bad news for the Monmouth Mustangs is the team nipping at their heels for the top seed in Class C South, Madison, handed them their first defeat on Thursday, 3-1.
The good news for the Mustangs is they still control their own destiny and can still secure home field advantage in the tournament. But they’ll need to improve upon their ragged play at Chick Field to do it.
Madeline Wood’s goal midway through the first period gave the Bulldogs a lead they would never relinquish. Emily Edgerly and Ashley Emery scored in the second half to offset the Mustangs’ lone goal by Emily Fletcher.
Both teams are now 11-1-0 and tied atop the Class C South Heal point standings. The Mustangs will reclaim the top spot if they win their final two games against Mountain Valley and Oak Hill, which are Class B schools worth more Heal points than Madison’s remaining all-Class C slate of Mt. Abram and Winthrop.
“We were ragged. They just physically beat us to the ball,” Monmouth coach Gary Trafton said. “They ran harder to the ball and when they had opportunities, they cashed in.”
Madison’s coaches didn’t feel their team played at the top of its game, either.
“That was not a great game for us in terms of what we can do,” Madison co-coach Erin Wood said. “We were not sharp at all.”
But the Bulldogs capitalized on some key Monmouth mistakes, none more critical than a short goal kick that Wood intercepted in the midfield. The senior then deked left past a defender, then beat Monmouth goalie Katie Harris (10 saves) to the far post for a 1-0 lead.
“They’ve always had a solid goal kick, so it kind of threw me off when it was coming straight at me,” Madeline Wood said. “I just tried to intercept it and tried to beat the defender. I was just focusing on trying to finish the goal because I knew being the first one to score is very important.”
Madison outshot Monmouth, 20-15.
Monmouth lost junior center-halfback Emily Grandahl early in the second half after a collision Minutes later Edgerly took a cross from Sydney LeBlanc from the right wing and made it 2-0 with 27 minutes remaining.
With Madison goalie Lauren Hay bearing down on her on a through ball, Fletcher slid, collided with Hay (seven saves) and still punched home Monmouth’s goal midway through the second half.
Seeing their lead cut in half only seemed to energize the Bulldogs, and Emery blast to the top right corner with 11:24 remaining turned out to be more than enough insurance.
The Bulldogs avenged a 3-2 loss to the Mustangs in Madison on opening day.
“We’ll find out what type of team this is,” Trafton said. “We control it. We’ve got two Class B teams to play and they’ve got two Class C teams to play. So we can control being No. 1 or we can give it to them.”
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