By Thomas Sellers Jr.
Brighton’s Cat Fletcher tries to hold off Munford defender Lyndsie Ralyea during last Thursday’s game.
Forgive the Munford Lady Cougars for maybe entering last Thursday night’s game a little confident. Dylan Burnett’s crew entered the game at Brighton Stadium with a 9-3-1 record. The Lady Cougars tied area power Lausanne and crushed District 13-3A rival Dyer County 12-0 for the biggest win in school history. The victory over the Lady Choctaws improved Munford to 2-0 in the league. Next up was Tipton County and league foe the Brighton Lady Cardinals. But as Burnett noted, the Lady Cardinals would be ready and give his squad a battle. Brighton’s strategy was keeping the Lady Cardinals in the game only trialing 2-0 at halftime. Then the Lady Cougars appeared to snap out of their swagger coma to pull away with 4 goals leading to a 6-0 win. “We usually start quite well in the first half, then slow in the second,” Burnett said. “It was kind of flip flop today. I don’t what exactly it was. I can tell in our warm ups, we were not all here. I don’t understand why because it’s a district game. It’s Brighton. “When you look at the schedule, this is one of the games the girls get most hyped about,” he continued. “I don’t know why we started slow, but we did. Once we finally got that first goal, it was kind like a sigh of relief, ‘OK, we’re in this game.’” The first goal came off the foot of Rachel Davenport when she took a pass from Lyndsie Ralyea and race down the field for the shot into the net. Munford was ahead 1-0 at the 19:03 mark. About 10 minutes later Davenport netted her second goal of the night to put Munford ahead 2-0 at the break. “We kind of settle in and that second half was more like us being able to possess the ball,” Burnett said. “We wore them down and they set everybody back. That second half we were down here most of the time.” Kasey Moore’s direct kick goal got the second half outburst started for Munford. Moore made the score 3-0 for the Lady Cougars with a 30-yard shot. A couple of minutes later Ralyea got into the scoring act netting the Lady Cougars’ fourth goal. Then Ralyea got back setting up teammates locating Demis Brown for Munford’s fifth goal. Brown has been one of the leading scorers for the Lady Cougars this season as a freshman. She added to her total late in the contest taking another assist from Ralyea to make the final 6-0. “The more the season goes along, the girls are meshing,” Burnette said. “How each person plays and how to play as team, when you’re getting multiple players on the board that’s great. That shows you’re not one dimensional.”
The Lady Cardinals will travel down to Munford Oct. 4 for the rematch.
