Bradford girls soccer coach Colton Bly has made it known that he wants his team to play quality opponents as much as possible. The Lady Owls had a good showing against one of those very teams last week in a close 1-0 loss to Warren.
Unfortunately, Bradford wasn’t as sharp on Tuesday in a 8-2 loss to Villa Maria at Parkway Field.
“We struggled to keep possession and if we struggle to keep possession, we can’t play our style of soccer,” Bly said. “Villa Maria has a ton of quality and that makes it difficult because they try to break teams down by keeping possession and then at the right moment they go forward with an attack on the goal.”
After some good back-and-forth play to begin the game, the Lady Owls were able to take an early lead on a beautiful chip shot from sophomore striker Regan Johnson.
A well-played ball allowed Johnson to outrun the defense and lob the ball over the goalkeeper to give Bradford a 1-0 lead roughly 13 minutes into the game.
The goal was an example of the kind of counter-attacking Bly wants to see from his team.
“It was done to perfection,” Bly said about the buildup to the goal. “Regan made a great run, we got an excellent ball in behind [the defense] and we got the goal.”
Villa Maria regained its composure, though, equalizing the score less than three minutes later on a goal from Kennedy Deuterman, who made a nice turn and placed the ball in the bottom right corner.
The Lady Victors took the lead just a minute later on a scoring strike from Sarah Fails.
From this point on, Villa Maria really began to take control, pinning Bradford in its own end and forcing the Owls to make rushed, panicked passes.
After it looked like Bradford might make it to halftime down just one goal, the Lady Victors came up with three goals in just over two minutes, courtesy of Emily Yaple, Fails, and Kylie Frantz.
“For us it’s just about having quality to be able to play out and receive the ball and connect so that we can build our attack,” Bly explained. “However, if we’re not able to do that and we’re losing the ball one, two passes into our possession, we’re going to struggle.”
Villa Maria sought to build on its 5-1 lead coming out of the break and did just that only minutes into the half, as Yaple scored her second of the night on a nice, low shot that beat Bradford keeper Mackenzie Lucas.
Mya Lewis made it 7-1 on a deflection off a Villa Maria corner kick.
Bradford was able to find the back of net one more time on a penalty kick from Lucas, who came out to play the field near the end of the game. The freshman was able to draw a foul in the box and summarily converted her penalty chance.
Kat Costa put in one more goal for Villa Maria with just over two minutes left to seal the deal.
While obviously disappointed with the result, Bly sees this defeat — just like last week’s to Warren — as a prime learning opportunity for his young squad.
“Quality opponents like this bring out the best in us, not just in terms of focus and work rate, but also the technical demands are very high,” Bly said. “We have to be extremely sharp. We can’t switch off. Each individual player has to do their job.
“Games like this are good for us even though the scoreline might not indicate it,” he added.
Bradford (5-4) will be at home again on Thursday when it hosts DuBois at 5 p.m.
