By Thomas Sellers Jr.
Entering the 2021 season, the Millington Lady Trojan Soccer team has some lofty expectations.
Coming off a district championship, Millington is looking to capture Regionals and host Sub-State this season. Coaches Rosemary Boswell and William Carter spent the first week of 2021 building cohesion within the ranks and playing solid competition like Fayette Academy.
After the Lady Vikings escaped with an 1-0 victory over Millington, the Lady Trojans used that lesson to dominate Ripley in their league opener.
On Aug. 24, another district test was on the agenda with the Haywood Lady Tomcats coming to Hornet Field. Millington improved to 2-1 overall blitzing the Haywood goalie with several shots to prevail 6-0.
“The season is going really well,” Carter said. “We’re 2-0 in district so it’s going pretty well. This was our third game so far and we still have a little learning curve to go. We’ve kind of finalize our roster this week. Thing are looking good because we’ve got a lot of talent from last year. Added a lot of new talent, so I am feeling pretty good. I feel this team is even more solid than last year. And last year we did alright.”
Carter noted after the Fayette Academy game, the Lady Trojans got a chance to make a few adjustments to prepare for league play.
“We had a couple of players not at their best recently getting COVID shots,” he noted. “They were a little bit down from that. The heat was really bad. They kind of caught us off guard and we didn’t play our best. I told them to shake it off and we did learn a lot about ourselves from that game. We’ve made some basic adjustment from since then and we’ve played a lot better.”
The good play continued against Haywood with Millington having multiple shots on goal throughout the first 20 minutes. The Lady Tomcat goalie was up for the challenge blocking and deflecting many of those shots.
The first Lady Trojan to successfully connect on a goal was Koreena Bedford. Before halftime new teammate Keria McGhee scored on a rebound attempt to make the tally 2-0.
Millington made a couple of adjustments as for attacking near the goal to score 4 second-half goals. Alexis Thompson made it 3-0 with a 20-foot blast into the back of the net. The Lady Trojans surged ahead 4-0 and 5-0 with goals from Rilee Ervin and Kinverlin Mesinos.
The scoring concluded with Bedford’s second goal of the day. Millington stayed unbeaten in district play with the 6-0 victory. The Lady Trojans could have scored six goals in the first 20 minutes. Carter said the proves his squad still has some work to do.
“We need to do a better job of passing that ball to the other side of the field,” he concluded. “If that keeper is playing to the right and we’re bunched up on the right, we need to get that ball to the left and vice versa. We have to do a better job of staying wide and getting them to defend that entire 24-feet across the goal.”
