By Thomas Sellers Jr.
What would be the next chapter of this storybook season for the Millington Lady Trojans?
Soccer history has already been written at Millington Central High School with Rosemary Boswell’s and William Carter’s squad winning the school’s first district title in the sport.
Tuesday at Hornet Field, the Lady Trojans had another chance for a historic first. Standing in the way of the program’s first Region soccer championship was the familiar foe — the Fayette-Ware Lady Wildcats.
Those very same Wildcats fell victim to the Lady Trojans in the District 15-2A title game earlier this month. With revenge on their minds, Fayette-Ware overcame an 1-0 deficit to prevail 2-1. The Lady Wildcats denied Millington that piece of history and sent the Lady Trojans on the road for Sectionals this Saturday.
“This is the third time we’ve played this team,” Carter noted. “And that’s a pretty good team over there. We can’t take anything away from them. They played a pretty good game there in the second half. If you notice they changed their game plan up. Their best scorer, they tried in two games and couldn’t get anything with her. So they moved her to the midfield and put some new people up top. Which was a good plan by their coach.
“They executed their plan pretty well,” he added. “We did not ours. We got up and it seemed like once we got up in the second half everybody was like, ‘Cool, we’ve got a lead. We can just relax right now.’ You can never coast on a team like that this deep into the playoffs. They’re not just going to let you go ahead and do what you want.”
After a scoreless first half, the Lady Trojans finally got on the scoreboard at the 47-minute mark courtesy of a Koreena Bedford goal. Throughout the first 40 minutes Millington dominated with multiple shots on goal but missed the target.
Trailing 1-0, Fayette-Ware got more aggressive and started to locate freshman Mauryah Jones on the exterior. The wing took the ball from the outside and attacked the Lady Trojan goal scoring twice.
Jones’ first goal tied the game at 1-1 at the 51-minute mark of the game. About 10 minutes later Jones gave Fayette-Ware the lead for good.
“I hope they let this loss set in and it ignites a fire within them,” Carter said. “’You know what we played good but we did not play our best.’ I felt if we played our best we would have beaten this team we’ve already beaten twice this year much worse than by one goal. We just came out today flat and we’re missing a couple of key players. We hope to get them back by Saturday and we’ll see how it goes from there.”
The Lady Trojans’ historic season continues with the girls’ first appearance in a Sectional game. With the defeat Millington had to travel Saturday.
“It’s going to take everyone of the 11 player that we’ll have out there on the field playing to their full capacity,” Carter said. “I know that’s asking a lot because we’re not a very deep team. We’re a young team. We only have two seniors that play. We’re a pretty young team and these girls are playing really well in the grand scheme of things.
“That didn’t show today, but they are playing really well,” he concluded. “What it’s going to take Saturday? Everybody is going to have to come out here and play good team ball, good passes and they have to believe in the drills we do offensively. And they have to believe in the defensive scheme. They broke us twice on our scheme today and that’s all it took.”
