The Batesville Lady Bulldogs hosted the Mt. Vernon Lady Marauders on Monday night. The host team walked away victorious with a hard fought 2-1 victory. Despite being outshot 20-6, Batesville was able to capitalize on their opportunities and the Lady Bulldog defense bent but didn’t break throughout the game to help preserve the early lead. Batesville took a 1-0 lead at the 28:00 mark of the first half. After a defensive stop, Liz Heidlage laid the ball off to Caroline Kellerman who found a streaking Abbey Prickel for a breakaway score. Prickel made a great first touch into space and hit a hard shot up and over the Lady Marauder goalkeeper. 4 minutes later, Carlie Werner scored what proved to be the game winner. Prickel found Werner open in the middle of the field, Werner took a few touches forward and found some space 30 yards out. She put her head down and drove a shot into the upper 90 with pace on the ball that gave the Mt. Vernon with no chance to get a glove on the ball. Olive Cerniglia and the Batesville defense maintained the shutout for the first half. Cerniglia made a diving save with 4 minutes left in the half to keep the ball out of the net.
In the second half, Batesville had a few opportunities early in the half, but found themselves on the defensive end for much of the final 20 minutes. Cerniglia made two more saves on corner kicks that kept the momentum on Batesville’s side. The Lady Bulldog defense led by Ellie Cassidy, Kari Reer, and Lily Meyer held strong and kept the Mt. Vernon forwards in check and only gave up shots outside of 30 yards that Cerniglia handled easily. With 10:19 to play in the match, the Lady Marauders finally got on the scoreboard as Cerniglia couldn’t quite get to a neat post shot that went into the top net to make the score 2-1 in favor of Batesville. The Lady Bulldogs held strong for the final 10 minutes as they earned a very tough 2-1 win.
“This was a big win for us tonight. Each game we are getting better and competing at a high level. Liz Heidlage is our glue in the midfield and continues to run all over the field and distribute to our forwards and make defensive stops. Carlie and Abbey up top are becoming a dynamic duo and are continually gaining chemistry and the combination is working as they both scored tonight. Ellie Cassidy continues to lead a new lineup in the back and took care of a lot of dangerous balls tonight. Olive celebrated her birthday in style tonight with the best game of her career. She made big save after big save to keep us in the game. With 4 games to play, we hope to continue this momentum which will allow us to bring a lot of confidence into sectional play.” Coach Laker commented on the game.
In the JV contest, Mt. Vernon defeated the Lady Bulldogs by a final score of 1 – 0.