Center Grove’s Kylie Smith tries to beat a Carmel player to the ball during Saturday’s semistate match.
Sam Findley | For the Daily Journal
SEYMOUR
With one minute remaining in its Class 3A semistate match against third-ranked Carmel, Center Grove earned a corner kick.
A chance.
Trailing by a goal, it was what the No. 7 Trojans needed. That chance, though, came and went when Carmel goalkeeper Aubree Empie sprung up to catch the ball just over a pair of Trojans.
With the ball in her hands, Empie had all but sealed the the Greyhounds’ 1-0 win and Center Grove’s season.
Carmel (18-2-2) repeatedly pounded on the Trojans’ lower third looking to put one in the back of the net early in the match. The Greyhounds’ pounding put pressure on Center Grove’s Sophia Gorall, but the junior goalkeeper kept Carmel at bay early and often — like when she went diving to the corner and blocked a Rylie Wilpolt shot.
Gorall kept multiple attempts out of the goal, but Carmel finally broke through 9:31 remaining in the first half, when a corner kick from Megan Hamm found Adalyn Cameron’s feet for the lone goal of the match.
“At the end of the day, it’s all about taking your chances,” Center Grove coach Myron Vaughn said. “They got theirs. The girl took her volley really well, and anybody gets to hit a volley like that at a semistate game, it’d be a once-in-a-lifetime type of achievement and she should be proud. It was a good goal. Nothing to be ashamed of.”
Center Grove’s Jenna Margiotti put the ball in the box for the Trojans with a header but Empie came up with a stop, keeping the Greyhounds ahead 1-0 heading into the half.
After the break, the Trojans finally got some opportunities off of a corner and a free kick. Neither resulted in a goal, but the newfound momentum in Carmel’s half was a positive sight for Center Grove.
It came about partially due to the change Vaughn and his coaching staff made to the style in which the team played with.
“We changed the shape a little bit in the second half and added a couple more attackers to the game, because we knew that with the wind the game was going to be tilted a little bit,” Vaughn said. “So with the game being tilted a little bit going in that direction, we wanted to add some players into the final third. It seemed to work. I think it took us a little bit, though, to kind of accept that we were going to be on the front foot and we had to really encourage the girls to play a little bit higher up the field. Once they did, I think we started to see a little bit more success.”
On top of CG’s offensive momentum, Carmel’s offense sputtered in the second half, only earning limited action and shots on the Trojans’ goal. Cameron’s tally held up, however, and the Greyhounds were able to hold on.
Coming into this season, first-year head coach Vaughn had his sights set on the top spot in the state — and with a large core returning, his expectations are even greater for next year.
“We’re here because they bought in, and that’s the big thing,” he said. “We hate losing seniors anytime. And the six girls who are going to be leaving us, we’re going to miss them dearly. But at the end of the day, this is a part of it. You have to reload, you have to reshuffle, you have to have a new group of players the next season. And at that point — not now because right now my focus is these girls, but when we need to we’ll start to think about how we can improve, but we’ve got 16 juniors right now that are on our tournament roster. And that means 16 seniors next year; that means a whole year of experience that they’re going to get to take from this to next season.
“The expectations this year were to win a state championship, so going into next year, with those circumstances and returning that many solid quality players and adding to the roster, that’s not going to change. If anything, the expectation should be higher and we should have a more pronounced definition of those goals as we start the season.”
