Just as it had in its sectional semifinal victory two days earlier, the Center Grove girls soccer team generated scoring opportunities early and often in Saturday’s championship match.
This time, the host Trojans had no trouble converting them.
Class 3A No. 7 Center Grove scored four first-half goals and coasted from there for a 4-0 win over Terre Haute South, claiming the sectional crown for the first time since 2019.
The Trojans (15-2-2) will host Roncalli in a regional semifinal match on Thursday evening.
“I think the biggest difference was that we were able to connect passes a lot better and just play together as a team a lot better,” Center Grove junior midfielder Taylor Wert said. “The goals just seemed to follow with that.”
Center Grove had a pair of corner kicks in the early going and cashed in on the second one. Wert’s ball into the box was deflected out to Brooklyn Brown, who was waiting out in front of the goal mouth to punch it into the upper part of the net just 6:41 into the match.
Goal number two also came on a rebound. A hard shot by Wert was tipped off the crossbar by Braves netminder Josiah Killinger, and the ball caromed out to Ella DeWitt, who hammered it home with 25:43 left in the half.
Wert made it a 3-0 game when she tucked a slow rolling shot inside the left post with 16:41 to go before intermission. Defender Addie Crowe then capped the first-half blitz, scoring at the back post after a Molly Tapak corner bounced her way.
The outburst came on the heels of a three-goal second half in Thursday’s semifinal win over Bloomington North.
“We challenged them before the game started to allow the second half on Thursday to kind of get us started for today,” Center Grove coach Myron Vaughn said, “and to make sure to maintain the same idea and principles of what helped us be successful on Thursday in the second half. I thought the girls were exceptional with that today in terms of starting the game off with a level of intensity, discipline and the style of play that we were looking for.”
The Trojans didn’t pad the lead further in the second half — an apparent Wert goal off a picture-perfect service from Tapak was waved off due to an offside call around the midway point — but they didn’t need to. Terre Haute South never seriously threatened, and Vaughn pulled his starters with about 21 minutes to go.
The Royals (11-7-1) got past host Franklin Central in their sectional final courtesy of a goal from Hannah Morgan, who put home the rebound after a hard initial shot from Micah Waugh. Ansley Bishop made that tally hold up, coming up with eight saves to preserve the shutout victory.
That sets up a rematch of Sept. 6, when Center Grove defeated Roncalli by a 3-2 score.
“It’ll be a tough match, especially considering we’ve already played them,” Wert said. “That always makes it a different kind of scenario. But it’ll be a good game, and I think that if we fight hard and do what we’re supposed to, we can continue to make things work.”
Vaughn is confident that his team can keep doing that; the Trojans have won their last six matches by a combined score of 15-0.
“We haven’t been scored on, and we have kept clean sheets in all of those games,” he said, “so that right now is what we’re going to hitch ourselves to and say if we can keep the ball out of the back of the net, we feel like we can go score on anybody. We’ve only been kept off the scoresheet one time this entire season, against Carmel, and we think that if we get that opportunity again, we think we can have a different outcome.”
