By Dave Morrison
OAK HILL – Woodrow Wilson had a rather large to-do list coming into a showdown with rival Oak Hill Thursday.
Although the game had absolutely no bearing on the sectional tournament next month, Woodrow had plenty to play for in the rematch of the previous matchup, win by Oak Hill, 2-1.
Woodrow Wilson (3-8-1) scored two second-half goals to earn a 2-0 victory against their rival.
There was no shortage of motivational tools from which Woodrow Wilson coach Julie Agnor to choose Thursday night.
Chief among those was the fact the First the Flying Eagles were playing for JV keeper Marina Walling, who suffered a facial injury after sustaining a knee to the face in the game on Tuesday. The freshman will undergo surgery on Wednesday. The girls were dedicating the game to her, Agnor said.
“The girls were all concerned about her,” the coach said. “It kind of brought the girls together.”
Second, Agnir said her team was tired of losing, sitting at 3-8-1 after the win.
“The girls were determined tonight that they were going to play differently than they have been,” Agnor said. “We’ve played some really tough teams this year so far and they got tired of losing. And they decided that tonight was the night.”
Then there is the rivalry with Oak Hill. With the Red Devils hosting, Agnor said that her Flying Eagles team didn’t want to go into tournament play with two losses to their rival.,” Agnor said.
“Absolutely,” Agnor said. “That was the whole idea coming over today. We wanted to give these girls the idea that they are capable of winning (the section). They just have to play like this every time.”
Oak Hill coach Gerald Wilburn wouldn’t say to was a setback but it was was a letdown for Oak Hill, which will host Princeton in the first round of the section tournament next month.
“Every game matter,” Wilburn said. “Every time we play Woodrow my kids want to win. I’m not going to say setback. We have to keep working and get better.”
The came was tied at the half, a fortunate thing for the homesteading Red Devils because it the game was played mostly on Oak Hill’s side as the Flying Eagles were consistently on the attack.
Woodrow finally scored when Ana Ackon-Annan got the ball in the box into the box and uncorked a kick that hit the side post and bounced in front of the goal where keeper Taylor Suttle turned and corralled it. After a conference, officials rolled the ball had broken the plane of the goal line.
“When the goalie turned, she turned into the goal (and the ball crossed the line), that’s what happened there,” Agnor said.
“I don’t want to talk about the refs, I appreciate all those guys,” Wilburn said. “I’m not sure what it was. You can’t worry about it, you have to keep playing and we had chances after that to tie it up and we didn’t.”
The second goal came off a perfectly executed corner kick from freshman Carly Fisher that was headed in on a nice play by senior Nevaiah Simmons.
“We worked on those yesterday, we worked on that yesterday,” Agnor said. “That was our big thing, and it just goes to show how you practice is how you play.”
Wilburn said it was a good play by Simmons.
“She made a good run, was first to the ball, got her head on the ball and somebody on my team, we didn’t mark her,” Wilburn said.
The Red Devils had ample opportunities as Wilburn noted,, opportunities, notably in second half, after Woodrow had been the aggressor in the first half.
The Red Devils had an open look at the bounded high off the crossbar and into a parking lot beyond the goal at the 35:30 mark and another sliced off the side post less than three minutes later.
“We came out flat and we were playing a lot of kick ball and it’s ugly soccer,” Wilburn said. “We didn’t move the ball as well as I thought we would. We wanted to win tonight, they came out and played a little harder than we did, beat is to some balls, and they beat us. No excuses.
Woodrow Wilson improved to 3-8-1 on the season and the Flying Eagles host PikeView Tuesday. Oak Hill, now 7-5, is at South Charleston on Saturday at Noon.
