MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – Despite the downpour that swept over Bakers Ridge for the first half of Morgantown and University’s first rivalry game of the season, the Mohigans capitalized early on UHS miscues to stay far enough ahead of a second-half surge, defeating the Hawks, 15-8.
“We’ve come a long way since our first game,” MHS coach Rich Farber said. “We haven’t really had too much competition except for Fairmont [Senior], and this game is always a lot of emotion. So I think we handled it well.”
The Mohigans (4-1) and Hawks traded goals through the first 10 minutes of play, but Morgantown broke open the scoring down the stretch to take a 7-4 lead at the half, three goals coming from Hannah Calvert and two from Sammie Gray.
University, behind two goals by Sela Chico, began to chip away at MHS’s lead in the second half, but the Mohigans had padded the lead well enough in the first 15 minutes thanks to a combined four goals from Gray and Rachel Hollander to stave off the Hawks.
Calvert led the Mohigans with five goals and Gray hard three goals in the win. Each also tacked on an assist.
Chico, Rebecca Chmiel and Morgan Ryan all had two goals in the loss, while Chmiel and Ryan accounted for one assist each.
Moving forward, the rivals will meet again next Friday at Morgantown High. Both Farber and UHS coach Kevin Armstrong noted that, while both teams have shown growth since their recent season openers, there’s still much to work on.
“What’s looking good is the way we’re moving the ball in transition, stuff like that; ground balls are our trouble spot right now,” Farber said.
“There was a couple of our girls that played hard and never gave up,” he said. “The thing that I loved was, they had a choice: they could have packed it in. Morgantown is playing really well, and it could have been really easy for our girls to pack it in and they didn’t. What do we need to work on? We just have to be better communicators and movers without the ball. We’ve got to be talking to each other.”
In total, keeper Amelia Desai accounted for nine saves in the net. With this, Farber was still happy to hold UHS (2-3) to eight goals, just below the Hawks’ goals per game average this season (8.5), noting that his defense was “a lot better” than it has been through the last four games despite improvements still needing to be made.
Despite a loss, Armstrong was quick to praise his team, especially senior keeper Lexi Starcher who is navigating her first season.
“Lexi’s doing spectacular, she really is,” he said. “They’ve got some skilled shooters on their side and Lexi was there to make some stops. I love this girl to death because she stepped up; she’s never played a game before and steps into one of the hardest positions on the team. And she made some really nice saves, but the way they shoot some of them are going to get by. She never gave up.”
Morgantown next hosts Buckhannon-Upshur on Monday, while University travels to Preston on Wednesday. This will be the first meeting for the Mohigans and Buccaneers, while University will look to hang win No. 2 on the Knights.
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