Fairis lifts Warriors to girls' soccer win over Colonels

By JERRY HOLSWORTH | Special to The Winchester Star

STEPHENS CITY — Sherando’s Alexa Fairis scored a hat trick Thursday to lead the Warriors to a 5-3 Conference 21 West and Northwestern District girls’ soccer victory over James Wood at Arrowhead Stadium on Thursday night.

Although the Warriors (5-3-1, 2-1 conference, 2-0 district) dominated play throughout the game, the Colonels (1-4-1, 0-2 conference, 0-1 district) took advantage of the opportunities they had to keep the match close until the final moments.

“This was a cross-county rivalry game, and anything can happen,” Sherando coach Rob Kilmer said. “It was a hard-fought game. I thought we controlled the game, but they took advantage of the opportunities they had. I’m very pleased with where we’re at right now.”

Sherando outshot Wood 17-5, but the Colonels converted three of those shots into goals.

Wood actually broke into the scoring column first.

“I thought we did everything we could with the opportunities we had,” Colonel coach Jim Carden said. “We fought as hard as we could, and you can’t ask anymore than that.”

After the Warriors failed to convert on their first four shots of the game, Wood’s Katie Padgett outran Sherando’s defense on a breakaway and put the ball past Warrior goalkeeper Kara Hendren to put the Colonels up 1-0 in the seventh minute.

Wood’s advantage, however, only lasted eight minutes.

Fairis slipped past two Colonel defenders in the penalty area, then blasted the ball past Wood goalkeeper Claire Beccaccio to even the score.

While Sherando kept the ball in Wood’s end of the field for most of the first half and the Colonels were leaning heavily on defense with seven players guarding their goal, Warrior fullback Hannah Li had the unenviable task of covering speedy forward Kaylah Gankiewicz in the open field.

“She’s really fast,” Li said. “The goal was to keep her from starting anything. It was a little intimidating at times, but knowing Abbie Dodson was behind me was helpful.”

Li handled the difficult assignment well for most of the game, but with 11 minutes left in the first half Gankiewicz slipped past her and raced towards the Warrior goal. The Colonel freshman let loose a shot from 12 yards out that gave Wood its second lead of the game, 2-1.

Undeterred, Sherando struck again just before the end of the half when Lauren Heskett scored on a free kick from 25 yards out to tie the score 2-2 at halftime.

Despite have the wind at its back to begin the second half, James Wood was unable to slow down Sherando’s offense. The Warriors outshot the Colonels 15-2 over the final 40 minutes.

With that kind of an advantage it didn’t take the Warriors long to capitalize. Just 10 minutes into the half, Jessica Poole hammered a shot past Beccaccio from five years out to put Sherando up 3-2.

Fairis then took over the Warrior offense and made sure there would be no Colonel comeback.

The Warrior junior gave Sherando some breathing room when she scored from five yards out off a pass from Sydney Hunter with 22:30 left in the game.

“I thought we lacked a little energy to begin the game,” Fairis said. “But we really came together as a team in the second half and were able to secure the win. James Wood is a big rival and it’s always good to get a win against them.”

The Colonels, however, refused to give up and Madison Myers brought them to within one, 4-3, with a goal from 10 yards out off a pass from Audrey Hottle.

But that proved to be as close as Wood could get as Fairis completed her hat trick, scoring her third goal with less than a minute left to play for the final margin.

“This was a tough loss,” Carden said. “We’re missing some players and we asked most of our kids to play a full 80 minutes and it showed. They ran us into the ground in the second half. I really don’t think that we played that bad. They just beat us to the ball all night and they deserved to win.”