Lady Rams fall to West Branch in D6 opener

By Kenny Varner Jr.
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Updated: October 28, 2020

Photos by Tim Weight

By Kenny Varner

WINGATE – They went down fighting.

The season wound down for the Penns Valley girls soccer team Wednesday when they fell to West Branch 2-0.

“All and all, we are happy to just have a season. No one new a month or two ago if we were even going to have a season. When we look at the results, we lost 10 seniors. We lost a bunch of big time players from last season and small squad from this season and we pulled off a pretty good season of 12-4 in the regular season and a berth in the semi finals,” said Penns Valley coach Andrew Beverly. “All and all, we can be a little disappointed in our performance tonight. Basically, we weren’t at our best tonight we couldn’t put the game plan together. Our season as a whole we didn’t know really what to expect going in because we relied on a lot of the girls for a bunch of stuff. They just stepped up and put together a great year.”

In the first half, it would be a chess match for the two teams with each team trying to strategically out think the other.

It was a back and forth battle as they tried to spot a weakness or opening in the others defense.

After a basic draw by the two teams for almost half the game, the Warriors got on the board first.

Trinity Prestash posted an unassisted blast to the upper corner at 20:22, giving them the early advantage.

Both defense dug in their heels and solidified their defenses as the two went into the intermission with West Branch holding the 1-goal advantage.

In the second half, Penns Valley seemed to have an extra step faster than the Warriors and was pushing the ball down into the their back third. But a gutsy performance by West Branch’s goalie Sarah Betts was determined to keep the Lady Rams off the scoreboard. She finished with eight saves.

Penns Valley goalie Kylie Auman also finished with eight.

Despite everything that the Lady Rams could hit her way, no ball was able to get past the inspired play of Betts.

With time running out in the contest, Lauren Timblin clinched the win with an unassisted goal with 1:51 left, sending the Rams home for the season.