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PHS girl booters grab victory over Capital

Photo by Steve Hemmelgarn Parkersburg High’s Alexa Kotarski (23) battles for the ball with a Capital player Tuesday night at Stadium Field during a girls soccer game. The host Big Reds won, 3-1

PARKERSBURG — Freshman forward Madison Spears was instrumental in all three Parkersburg High goals Tuesday night as the Big Red girls posted a 3-1 soccer victory over visiting Capital at Stadium Field.

For PHS, now 5-5-1 after winning five of its last eight outings, Spears assisted on one goal and scored the other two. The Big Reds led 2-0 at the half and scored their third goal with 29:24 to play before the Cougars tallied their lone goal of the night.

Sarah McDonnell notched goal No. 1 for PHS when she knocked in a rebound shot just 3:47 into the game

Spears then booted in a penalty kick at 4:01 to go in the first half and added her second score at the 29:24 mark of the second half with an assist from Jordan Balog.

Capital’s Kaity O’Reilly scored with only 12:27 to play for the final 3-1 margin.

“We hit a pretty good stride to get where we are (record-wise) right now,” said second-year PHS head coach Eric McCoy. “We struggled for confidence a little bit early because we played some really tough teams to start (the season). But we’ve got it together a little bit.

“We’re still a young team though, so we’re still growing. We have our ups and downs, but we’ve done a better job of fighting through it immensely. And I think that’s why we’ve been getting better results.”

However, McCoy knows “we’ve got a tough part of the schedule coming up,” as the Big Reds have to play next at No. 2-ranked George Washington at 7:30 p.m. Thursday and then face No. 3 Cabell Midland at noon Saturday back home at Stadium Field. In fact, he added, “we have four of the top five ranked teams in the state left on our schedule, so have a lot of tough games ahead of us.”

On Tuesday’s match, “we were just a little flat tonight I thought.” said McCoy. “But it happens.”

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