Murphy – With most of the Lady Bulldogs being new to soccer or only having played the sport for one year, the team has been through some peaks and valleys in the early part of the season.
Thankfully, Murphy has hit a few peaks in recent games, beating Cherokee 1-0 on March 28 and Blue Ridge Early College 3-1 on Thursday.
“Any win is a good win for us,” head coach Little Holloway said. “We’re just trying to learn how to play the game of soccer. With much inexperience as we have, when we win it’s a good thing.”
Of the 20 players on the roster, only junior Catalina Barreiro and sophomore Lailee Holloway have been playing since they were young. Lochlan Rogers, Kinslie Campbell, Mollie Rogers and Lanie Vuick return from last year, but they only started playing the sport in high school.
Cherokee County does not really have a soccer culture, as there isn’t much of a recreation league presence. Murphy Middle School had co-ed teams in recent years, and this year was the first time they had enough interest to have both a middle school boys and girls team.
In other parts of the country, kids start playing soccer as young as age 4 and have a lot more experience with the game by the time they get to high school.
Practices have mostly focused on basic fundamentals like passing and receiving the ball, and some scrimmaging to make sure they’re staying in shape and getting used to the speed of the game. But Holloway said it’s a group that’s eager to learn.
“I’m just super-pumped to get to hang out with them,” Holloway said. “I’ve loved the game of soccer, always loved it. So to try to teach them it, they seem to all love it and they say it’s so much fun.”
The inexperience has led to game scores being all over the place. Murphy (3-3 overall, 3-1 Smoky Mountain Conference) started the season with a 6-1 loss to Smoky Mountain and 5-0 loss to Franklin, both 3A schools. The Lady Bulldogs then beat Hayesville 6-1 to open conference play before losing 10-2 to Swain County.
Against the Lady Braves (1-3, 1-2) and Lady Bobcats (0-4, 0-4), Murphy was able to come out in the win column. The Lady Bulldogs were able to dominate possession in the first half against Blue Ridge, which led to two goals from Holloway.
They were aggressive getting to the ball, which is something the team has been working on in practice. When they got possession, they did a good job getting the ball to Barreiro and Holloway, who knew when to look for potential chances.
Holloway scored her first goal in the sixth minute, then added another in the 12th minute when she was met by Blue Ridge goalie Mercedes McLaughlin, but the ball trickled past McLaughlin and into the net. Murphy had the chance to add more goals in the half, its best chance coming in the 17th minute, when Ashlyn Stroupe put away a cross from Holloway but was called offsides. The Lady Bobcats’ best chance came on a free kick in the 10th minute that was saved by goalie Calista Rumfelt.
Both teams had their chances in the second half, though Murphy was able to control possession from the middle to latter stages of the half and put away the game. In the 68th minute, Holloway trapped an errant pass and put one in the back of the net to extend the lead to 3-0.
With the Lady Bulldogs in control, they were able to get most of the roster experience and learn more instead of just focusing on constantly worrying about the opponent’s pressure. Coach Holloway isn’t promising wins the rest of the way, but she thinks her team can grow and improve on some of the lopsided results they had earlier in the season.
“There’s a couple of games early in the season where we didn’t have all of our players,” Holloway said. “So I don’t know if we can necessarily beat the teams that beat us, but I know we can get it a lot closer to the second half of the season.”
Murphy played at Highlands on Monday, the results of which were not available until after this week’s edition of the Cherokee Scout went to press. The Lady Bulldogs host Smoky Mountain at 6 p.m. Thursday.