BATH — In what could have been the final game of her high school career, Bryanne Lancaster came up big for Richmond.
Lancaster’s corner kick early in the second half led to one Bobcats goal, and a direct kick into the back of the net late sealed Richmond’s 3-1 victory over Buckfield in a Class D South girls soccer semifinal at McMann Field on Friday night.
“You hope your senior’s going to make some plays,” Richmond coach Troy Kendrick said. “She’s my senior captain, and three- or four-year starter. She made some big plays.”
The game was tied 0-0 at halftime, but the third-seeded Bucks (10-5-1) had a couple good chances right out of the gate to start the second half. The second-seeded Bobcats (12-3) avoided disaster, though, and got their own chance jabout seven minutes into the half.
Abigail Johnson’s quality shot was deflected wide by Buckfield’s Deja Bennett, which led to a Richmond corner kick. Lancaster looped the kick in from the corner and it went past Buckfield goalie McKenna Ridlon, through parts of a scrum before a charging Laura Brown kicked it in the goal to give the Bobcats a 1-0 lead.
“You love scoring on restarts, right?” Kendrick said. “We had that corner kick. We had just put that play in a couple days ago at practice, just try to give them a different look. And, you know, sometimes you just roll the dice and hope it works, because they’re tough in the back.”
“We were kind of pushing from there,” Buckfield coach Larry Thornton said.
The Bucks had to push even harder exactly one minute later when Richmond’s Bryannah Shea doubled the lead. The junior’s shot went off Ridlon and rolled into the back of the net to give the Bobcats a lead that Kendrick said “took the edge off.”
“That second goal kind of took the heat off a little, until (Buckfield) scored their goal, of course,” Kendrick added.
Lynn Szabo cut the deficit in half for Buckfield with a little more than 23 minutes remaining, sending a direct kick from just inside 30 yards over the leaping arms of Richmond goalie Elizabeth Johnson.
“We’ve fought back from worse,” Thornton said. “We keep coming. That’s the good thing about Buckfield girls, they don’t stop.”
But the Bucks had no answers left when Lancaster placed a direct kick in the back of the net with 3:38 remaining. Her shot from 30 yards out snuck inside the top-right corner of the frame to seal the victory.
“She drilled that shot,” Kendrick said.
Ridlon and Johnson both finished with five saves, but the Bobcats’ 5-3 advantage in second-half shots on goal — with two more going in — made the difference. Richmond also had the edge in corner kicks at 5-1, with Buckfield’s lone chance coming 30 seconds into the second half.
“It was a good battle,” Thornton said. “I mean, it’s Richmond-Buckfield, it comes down to these type of slugfests, we just ended up on the short end.”
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