With his team riding a four-game losing streak into Monday’s home match against Greenwood Christian, Franklin girls soccer coach Michael Pierson turned to a sideline observer and made a simple statement:
"We need a win."
The Grizzly Cubs granted Pierson’s wish, controlling play throughout in a 4-0 victory over the Cougars.
Franklin (3-4) was putting pressure on the GCA defense from the outset, and after having one would-be goal waved off in the seventh minute due to an offsides call, the hosts got on the board 9:45 in when Stephanie Brady punched a shot past Cougar netminder Ellie Bigelow.
The score remained the same until halftime despite numerous opportunities for the Grizzly Cubs, who had a couple of their 15 first-half shots carom off the crossbar and the corner of the goal frame.
Pierson was pleased with his team’s play overall but would have liked to see a better conversion rate on those scoring chances.
"Ball control, we’ve been working on for a while now," he said, "just trying to master the ball movement, outside and inside, and that worked really well. Finishing was not where we would like to be."
Better in the last 40 minutes, though. Freshman Erica Buening doubled the Franklin lead just 3:04 into the second half when she collected a feed from Mollie Hill right in front of the goal mouth and knocked it past Bigelow.
"(Hill) had a great pass, and it was wide open," Buening said. "I just had to knock it in."
That was more than enough of a cushion for the Grizzly Cubs, who seldom allowed GCA (2-2) to venture into the attacking third of the field. It took the Cougars nearly 51 minutes to register a shot on goal, and Franklin keeper Addie Marshall enjoyed nearly as much action on the offesive end of the field — she took two shots on direct kicks, both from about 40 yards away — as she did in goal.
Marshall had to make just two saves to preserve a clean sheet in the win. Bigelow finished with 14 saves for the Cougars and came out to snuff out shot attempts on a few other occasions. Franklin finished with a 34-2 edge in total shots.
Goals from Hayley Doddridge with 12:32 left and Hill with 3:34 to go rounded out the scoring for the Grizzly Cubs, who were just happy to get back into the win column after a difficult stretch of matches the last two weeks.
"Hopefully we can just carry the momentum into Perry (Meridian) on Wednesday and keep moving forward," Pierson said.
