By Ted Waddell
GRAHAMSVILLE — Revenge was sweet on Tuesday afternoon at Tri-Valley Central School.
The T-V Lady Bears soccer team avenged their recent 3-0 loss to Chester by defeating the visiting Lady Hambletonians, 4-0, in a Section IX Class C quarterfinal match.
With the win, T-V (12-4-1) advanced to the semifinal round of the Class C tournament. The fourth-seeded Lady Bears were scheduled to play at No. 1 seed Millbrook yesterday afternoon.
T-V’s Tehnyat Khan opened up the scoring in Tuesday’s game at 11:53, as she recorded a goal on a crossing pass from Rachel Adriaans.
At 17:40, junior striker/midfielder Jakki Pugh scored on an assist from senior defender/midfielder Karyn Sheeley to put the Lady Bears up 2-0 at the intermission.
Less than five minutes into the second half, Adriaans, a sophomore striker, scored on a rebound.
At 30:23, Pugh closed out the scoring with a successful long-range shot.
Chester (8-8-1) took to the field minus one of its starting senior captains, as Sam Phillips was sidelined due to a concussion she sustained in a previous game.
Two of the Lady Hambletonians’ other starting senior captains, Emily Brosnan and Ciara Scrobe, played with ankle injuries, which proved to be a hampering factor.
“When you have a bad ankle in soccer you can run forward, but you can’t do much other than that and it hurts when you kick the ball,” Chester Coach Kevin MacEntee said.
“We came out a little flat in the first half, we just couldn’t get into it,” he added. “They were getting a lot of shots and finally cashed in on one.”
The Lady Bears’ first goal of the second half took a lot of wind out of Chester’s proverbial sails.
“When you give up three goals in a game like this, that’s huge,” MacEntee said. “The team that shows up to play the hardest is usually the team that is going to win.”
T-V Coach Mary Feusner said of the match, “We played in our offensive half [of the field] most of the time. We put two [shots] in [the goal] and that’s the momentum for us, and we held onto that momentum.
“We asked them to score in the second half and shut them out, and they did,” she added, referring to the halftime pep talk she and Assistant Coach Sue Sheeley had with the Lady Bears.