After finishing in a three-way tie for the Region 7-AAA soccer title and being relegated to the No. 3 spot due to a tiebreaker, the White County Lady Warriors could have easily come out flat in the first round of the Class AAA tournament.
But they didn't. And that was bad news for the Ringgold Tigers.
The Lady Warriors, the No. 5 team in the final regular season Class AAA poll, scored five times in the first half on the way to a dominating 8-0 road win over the Tigers, the No. 2 seed from Region 6-AAA.
The Lady Warriors (14-4) move onto the Sweet 16 next Monday, hitting the road again with a trip to Watkinsville for a Top 5 showdown with No. 2 Oconee County, which beat Redan 13-0 Monday in a their opening round match.
The Lady Warriors' win was part of a sweep for Region 7-AAA in the opening round. Lumpkin County, the region champs, knocked off Coahulla Creek 10-0, with Cherokee Bluff, the No. 2 seed, beating Lakeview-Fort Oglethorpe 6-0. North Hall, the No. 4 seed, pulled off the biggest upset on the opening day of play, posting a 2-0 win over Adairsville, the 6-AAA champion.
White County head coach Megan Runkle was pleased with the first round effort by the Lady Warriors.
“We did what we wanted to do tonight,” Runkle said. “We came out and scored a lot of goals. Previously in the playoffs, we had trouble scoring any. We've been a very defensive team in the past, and this year, we want to come out and score some goals, do it right away. I'm impressed with how the girls played.”
White County had a few scoring opportunities in the opening minutes of the game, and Hazen Ramey got the Lady Warriors on the board near the 34-minute mark, scoring off an assist from Sydnee Nix.
Nix ran down a long pass on the right side and fed a cross to Ramey, who deposited the ball into the back of the net. The Nix and Ramey duo got together again nine minutes later, with Ramey feeding Nix for a goal and a 2-0 lead with 25 minutes left in the opening half.
With 16:51 left in the half, Nealeigh Broadwell ran down a loose ball on the left side and feed a pass to Ramey in the box. Ramey made a move past one defender and put a shot into the back far corner for a 3-0 lead.
With eight minutes to go in the first half, Madison Hunter came up with a steal on Ringgold's attempt to clear the ball. Hunter took control of the ball about 25 yards in front of the net, dribbled and zigged-zagged past three defenders, and easily beat the Ringgold's keeper from close range for a 4-0 advantage.
McKinley Jones finished off the first half barrage in the final minutes of the first half, scoring off a pass from Ramey to give the Lady Warriors a big cushion heading into intermission.
“We had to adjust a little bit based on their (defensive) formation,” Runkle said. “They played a sweeper, which takes away our ability to use our speed advantage, but the girls did a great job adjusting.”
In the second half, Ringgold focused on keeping the Lady Warriors from tacking on more goals as they basically dropped their entire team in front of the goal, hoping to stonewall White County's potent attack.
“Ringgold slid back all their best players in the back, it was intense,” Runkle said. “They parked the bus back there in the second half. The girls worked around it. It was a good game to get ready for Oconee County.”
Despite the defensive efforts of the Tigers, the Lady Warriors tacked on three more goals in the final 19 minutes.
Leah Alexander made it 6-0 with an unassisted goal, and then Ramey finished off a hat trick with her third goal of the game off a pass from Ada Smith.
Ramey hit a 30-yard high arching shot over the keeper and into the top of the net to make it 7-0.
With 2:23 on the clock, Alexander closed out the scoring, putting a shot in the back of the net off a pass from Jones to make it 8-0.
The eight goals ran the team's total to 107 on the year, shattering the previous scoring mark of 60 goals set during the 2011 season.
The Lady Warriors dominated both phases of the game, ending the game with 15 shots while not allowing the Tigers to get off a single shot as keepers Naomi Roberts, Ansley Seabolt, and Macy Boggs got credit for the combined shutout.
“Our defense has been phenomenal,” Runkle said. “The girls that have been back there all year like Aubrey Dowdy, LaRue Campbell, Lily Gearing started as our three back, but we ended up adding a fourth in McKinley Jones, who's been our striker at times and been our leading goal scorer. We slid her back there and she's just been phenomenal too. Those four girls have to adjust the most on the field based on who we are playing, and they are always up to the challenge. We graduated two or three girls off the backline from last year we have a young goalie (Naomi Roberts). So these girls have come in and played great.”
The defensive effort also includes the play in the middle of the field by Hunter, Smith, Rachel Harris, and Anna Tatum.
Runkle said speed in a big factor in the team's success on both ends of the field.
“We are fast,” Runkle said. “We've played a couple of teams as fast as us, but we tend to be able to score goals based off our speed and keep a clean sheet because of our speed (on defense). We are very well rounded in that aspect. Usually a team has one or two fast guys and your able to mark them and shut them down. We've got a team full of girls that tend to be able to run past the other team.
The game was played on turf, which also helps magnify the speed factor for the WCHS squad.
“We love playing on turf,” Runkle said. “We would have loved to played at home, it was one of our goals, but we really thrive on the big turf fields. That's not what we have at White County.
With the first round win in the books, the Lady Warriors meet another set of Lady Warriors when they travel to Oconee County next Monday.
Oconee County is 13-2 this season, with their losses coming to Loganville and North Oconee. WCHS and Oconee have played two common opponents this year – Jefferson and Stephens County. Oconee beat Jefferson 1-0, while WCHS lost to Jefferson in the season opener by a 3-1 margin. Oconee knocked off Stephens, 7-1, while White County was a 8-0 winner over the Lady Indians.
“I think it's going to be a good matchup with Oconee, honestly, and I'm excited for it,” Runkle said. “It will definitely be a much closer game than this. We are going to have to elevate our game a little bit more to play with them. They play a similar formation to what we saw with Ringgold. We have to deal with them trying to take away our speed. It's smart to do that, because that's our advantage. We have to figure out a different way to play around that.”