Lakeview rolls to 7-1 victory in Div. II tourney

By Jon Moffett

The Bulldogs advanced to a sectional final matchup with Badger on Saturday.

CORTLAND — Early in the season, the Lakeview High girls soccer team had trouble scoring on its opponents.

Wednesday night was a different story, as the Bulldogs scored four goals in the first 10 minutes of the game, and defeated Pymatuning Valley 7-1, in a Division II tournament game.

“We’ve worked on it in practice during in-game situations where we need to push up on offense,” said Shawn Varley, who is in his sixth year as Lakeview’s coach, “and we finally got those goal-scoring opportunities because we’re pushing out a lot faster and our transitions are better.”

Wednesday Lakeview started its offensive surge early. Senior forward Chelsea Baker scored right as the clock hit 33 minutes. Goals by junior Marissa Defrancesco, sophomore Nicole Moldovon and freshmen Lindsey Clark and Kay Bahrey gave the Bulldogs a 5-0 lead with just under 11 minutes remaining in the half. Seniors Kiley Mathews and Rebecca Gilroy scored in the second half.

“It feels really great,” Gilroy said of the win. “Our passing is much better than at the beginning of the year and we’ve scored a lot more goals than in our first couple of games. We’ve really been getting the ball in the net.”

The Bulldogs advanced to a sectional final Saturday, playing host to Badger at 7 p.m.

Pymatuning Valley looked to put some pressure back on Lakeview, scoring when Brooke Monnolly, a sophomore forward, scored with 6:49 left in the first half. The Lakers had a second opportunity, but Nicole Virostek’s shot hit the crossbar and bounced away. In the second half, the Lakers weren’t able to muster much offense.

“We came over here tonight and by my assessment, and anybody who has seen Pymatuning Valley over the last couple years can recognize how much we’ve improved,” said Lakers coach Bob Baker, in his fourth season.

“Another thing that I pointed out to the kids who were on the bench was to look at their teammates who were on the field,” Baker said. “They were drenched with sweat, they played as hard as they could and most of them played for 80 minutes. That’s hard to do.”

The Lakers finished the season 6-9-1, which Baker said was a school record for wins.

“We’re making some progress,” Baker said. “We’ve got a couple of broken-hearted seniors out here right now, but I just reminded the juniors to look at the faces of your senior teammates, and promise yourself that next year will be different.”

jmoffett@vindy.com