LISBON — The Oak Hill Raiders have been dominant all season long, and the defending Class C South champions put forward one of their best efforts of the season Friday afternoon, taking out rival Lisbon 5-0 on the road.
“Today’s effort was 100 percent team effort,” Oak Hill coach Betsy Gilbert said. “These girls have worked really, really hard this week. We had practice yesterday and we had practice this morning. These girls really wanted this game. They had a few transitions to work through, but you know, the biggest key was communication, spreading that ball out and keeping the pressure on. They did all that, they did everything I asked them to do.”
Abby Asselin, Mercedes Pease and Hayden Spencer each had a goal and an assist to lead the Raiders.
“I know we are in first place right now and I kind of want to stay on top,” Spencer said. “I think everyone is out for us because we have been pretty good this year.”
Asselin started the scoring past the eight minute mark of the first half with a long shot just inside the right side of the circle with Pease notching the helper. Pease notched her goal five minutes later with a strong shot about ten yards from the goal.
“She’s our playmaker in the middle of the field there,” Gilbert said of Pease. “She’s responsible for keeping that ball and feeding those lanes. The girls need to cut on it you know and take that ball in hard. She’s a tremendous young lady.”
Lisbon coach Julie Petrie was looking for a better effort on senior day and Homecoming weekend.
“We had a couple of minutes of hope in the first half and I think they scored, we kind of gotten a little down,” Petrie said. “We never got anything started offensively, which was tough. So we didn’t have good touches, good passing today, there wasn’t a lot that clicked.”
Petrie said Oak Hill (12-1) did a good job of double-teaming some of her girls and the Greyhounds weren’t doing enough to get away from those double teams.
“I usually play forward, but when I went back on defense, I was covering the girls that this team usually passes it to,” Spencer said. “I was anticipating where the ball would be going and cutting on. I was trying to cut on a lot more.”
Oak Hill was keeping a special eye on Chase Collier and Kate Philbrick.
The Greyhounds (9-4) had a better start to the second half, with a quick penalty corner, but couldn’t get a quality offensive chance.
Spencer stretched the lead to 3-0 before the four-minute mark of the second half with Asselin getting her helper. At the 14:24 mark, Erika Hannigan stretched the lead to 4-0.
Spencer set up Magan Sheehy with 5:13 remaining in the game.
“Hayden is the most amazing offensive player I have,” Gilbert said. “You would think she’s going to miss that ball, but she has that long arm span — she can spin it right around to take that ball. She takes it hard and she has really improved a lot this year — she’s a great asset to our front line.”
nfournier@sunjournal.com
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