The William Byrd soccer teams will take on Northside Friday in Blue Ridge District action. The boys will be at Northside and the girls will host the Vikings at Patterson Stadium.
The girls won twice in the past week to improve to 4-2 overall. Last Friday at home the Terriers edged Staunton River, 1-0, as Jenna Rozenboom scored off an assist from Kelly O’Connor with about a minute left. Jensen Chrisley set up the play off a well-executed corner kick.
Grace Carroll was in goal for the win, but she didn’t have to make a save. The Eagles were credited with three shots but none of the three were on goal.
“We managed a lot more shots in this game (14) but we have to do a better job of getting them on frame,” said Byrd coach Tom Brown. “I felt that we were inconsistent with our possession of the ball. At times we had our heads up looking to connect passes and at other times we were just kicking the ball, which led to unforced turnovers. Overall, I was really pleased with out effort. It wasn’t always pretty, but we played hard and deserved the win.”
On Tuesday Byrd played on the William Fleming artificial turf and took a 4-1 win. Rozenboom had a three goal hat trick with assists by Chrisley, Jeanette Sako and O’Connor. Taylor Guilliams scored the first goal off an assist from Kathryn Woodson and Gracie Tyus had one save in goal.
“I felt the first half we really moved the ball well but we left a lot of goals out there,” said Brown. “We had several instances where we were one-on-one with the goalie but we need to pass the ball into the net instead of powering it by the goalie.”
The boys lost to Fleming at home Tuesday, 6-2. That was a disappointing outcome after beating Staunton River, 6-0, in Moneta last Thursday.
“Once again we’ve taken a step forward to wind up only taking two steps back,” said coach Matt Guilliams. “It was like they were creating spectacular opportunities and breaking us down that easily, we just didn’t want to stop it bad enough. I’m not sure what it’s going to take to get these guys to start playing with some heart and toughness, but they better figure it out fast because we’re already five games into the season and the schedule doesn’t get any easier from here on out before the tournament.”
Byrd trailed 3-0 at the half and the Terriers were down 5-0 before Jared Brown scored with less than 10 minutes remaining. Stephen Olsen had the other Byrd goal off an assist by Luke Johnston.
Last week in the 6-0 win over Staunton River Johnston and Teddy Drewes had two goals each while Jake Barker and Jesse Settle had one each. Zach Aylor was in goal for the shutout.
