Badger falls to Tigers in tourney opener
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NEW MIDDLETOWN -- Badger's season ended Tuesday with a lopsided loss to Springfield in a Division V, Northeast 2, sectional final. The 34th-seeded Braves kept it close for most of the first half but ultimately proved to be no match for the 12th-seeded Tigers in an 8-0 loss.
"It's tough because we’ve been building all year," Badger head coach Kenneth Donaldson said. "The girls played very, very well for what we had. I mean, we started with no subs, two of my people showed up late and then we had one sub after an injury. So it’s hard to keep going there, and we have quite a few new people on the field -- or newer people that haven’t played all that much until now. So I’m very happy with the way the team played overall, given where we started."
Just moments after kickoff, Reagan Peoples set up Emma Zitkovic for the first of her three goals.
It took more than 25 minutes before another goal, although the Tigers scored that one as well, with Liv Zitkovic putting Springfield ahead 2-0 with 10:57 remaining in the first half.
Four-and-half minutes later, Emma Zitkovic made it 3-0 by firing a shot past Piper Dailey in the bottom left corner of the goal.
Peoples then netted a late first-half goal, putting the Tigers up 4-0 less than 30 seconds before the break.
"I thought it was a little bit sloppy," Springfield coach Justin Kosek said. "They kind of gunked up the middle on us, and it kind of messed us up for quite a while until we started going outside again.
"I just think we kept trying to fight through one or two of us on four or five of them, and we just couldn’t get through, and there’s no reason to even try it. So we flipped a couple of girls and started playing wide, and we got down on them pretty quick that way, and were able to get down the field a little faster."
The second half proved to be more of the same, as Emma Zitkovic extended Springfield's lead with a goal within the first seven minutes. Liv Zitkovic then scored again in the 55th minute, triggering a continuously running clock, two-and-a-half minutes before Leah Garcia put one in to increase the advantage to seven.
To call an early end to the night, Kimi Wylie scored from long range in the final minute. Wylie's shot bounced off Dailey and into the net, ending the game 35 seconds prematurely due to the eight-goal mercy rule.
While Springfield is set for a district semifinal meeting with either No. 10 Columbiana or No. 38 St. Thomas Aquinas, Badger's season ended Tuesday. The Braves finished with a 3-9-3 record and having lost their last three matches and six of their last seven.
"It was probably more ups than downs," Donaldson said of the season. "The team has done better than I thought. We’ve generally stayed decently strong defensively. We just haven’t had anything going forward. And then, like you saw, we conceded several goals in the last part of the first half, and then, the second half is just like a continuation of that tiredness of just trying to keep ourselves going. So overall, with the low numbers that I’ve had and stuff like that, the girls really impressed me with their ability to just stay in the game.
"We’ve gotten better at [coordination] as the year has gone on, as individuals who hadn’t played as much in previous years got to play more and learned how to keep that coordination: the passing of the ball, getting the ball to feet, actually connecting a good pass, rather than just trying to kick it away from you no matter where it went. So they’re building that. I want them to take that into next season and know that that’s the way that we’re going to continue to grow."