The Lady Warriors blanked the Lady Arrows before the Ashland boys put six past Ontario in the nightcap.
ASHLAND - The first half of Friday's season opening doubleheader between Ontario and Ashland looked every bit like a season opener.
"We had a rough first half with a lot of good opportunities we didn't finish," Ontario girls coach Larry Atkinson said.
The Warriors lacked sharpness early on — which is to be expected in the first match — but once they settled in, looked every bit like a team poised to defend their district crown. Braelyn Llewellyn opened the scoring in the 52nd minute, Sasha Bulakovski doubled the advantage less than two minutes later, and Addi Pittman put the game out of reach in the 59th minute.
"We kept them in the game and kept the momentum up for them, but in the second half once we scored that first goal, their heads really went down and then the second goes in and they were done," Atkinson said. "But they battled hard in the first half against us, we just didn't settle down and do easy things. We had a lot of shots, I think we had 10 corner kicks, but we didn't score on one of them.
"We have to do better at that."
In the second game of the evening, Ashland and Ontario traded goals in the first half with the Arrows opening the scoring five minutes in on a Kaden Howman curler around the goalkeeper. Gavin Wagner responded for the Warriors eight minutes later with a phenomenal solo effort taking on two defenders, cutting back to send them the other direction, and buried it into the back of the net. Carson O'Brien put the Arrows back on top with a penalty, Trevor Breitinger nodded in the equalizer with 5:51 to go in the half, then Howman blasted one opposite corner in the 38th minute for a slim lead at the half.
"They got some quality guys that really jumped on our mistakes," Ashland boys coach Dustin Hosler said. "Halftime was about correcting those mistakes, and we did a much better job containing (Wagner) in the second half preventing those one-on-one situations. Eric (Cao) did a phenomenal job marking him defensively."
Ontario had a handful of good looks in the second half, but another O'Brien penalty 10 minutes in deflated the Warriors' sails a bit. Gary George then skipped a 25-yard free kick off the grass for a 5-2 lead and Howman completed his hat trick with 3:09 to go to seal the commanding win.
"We have a good counter attack, so we just tried to break down their defense as much as we could," Howman said. "We wanted to come into opening night strong. We haven't performed very well on opening night the previous couple years, so we just wanted to come in here and get a win."
One area the Ontario girls and Ashland boys dominated was 50-50 balls. It allowed the Lady Warriors and Arrows to dictate tempo most of the match and constantly be on the offensive.
"We got some big boys this year ... I thought that helped us quite a bit today when we can throw a 6-foot-2 guy in there, 6-4, and let them go in the box," Hosler said. "Then Gary (George) is super athletic and can jump, so we're gonna hopefully plan on winning most of those balls."
"We're pretty solid back there," Atkinson said of his defense. "We start with a 3-5-2, then we put some other players in and the people we put in were doing an outstanding job. In the first half we weren't winning the ball in the air. We let it bounce and that's when they were getting some opportunities against us. Second half we won almost every single ball in the air, and that's where the difference was because we could keep the ball pressure on them offensively."
Ontario boys put up a fight, Ashland girls had hands full
This isn't the Warriors team of 2024.
"We're extremely young with 26 players, half of them are freshmen," Warriors coach Stephan Armstrong said. "We knew Ashland was going to be deeper, bigger, faster, stronger than us, and we knew our guys had to be in game shape ready to play 80 minutes. Ashland exploited our lack of numbers and and lack of experience."
What it is, however, is a team learning and growing quickly.
"It's part of our philosophy in training camp," Armstrong said. "We had two weeks of two-a-days, and I don't know that any other school does that. It helps progress these young, inexperienced individuals, and we do a lot of team building activities to try and stay close together as a unit and a family."
The Arrows outmatched them in virtually every way, but that didn't stop Ontario from giving Ashland a scare in the first half with a pair of goals. And that alone should give this young team confidence moving forward.
"I think they're going to be a surprise team our here when you look around," Hosler said of Ontario. "They graduated a big class, but they are not short on talent."
Similarly, the Lady Arrows gave Ontario all it could handle in the first half.
"I think our intensity was there in the first half and we were maybe a little down on ourselves because we didn't capitalize on a couple of our chances knowing that we held them out," Ashland girls coach Lee Hunt said. "I think the second half was a little more of a mentality thing than it was a personnel or talent thing."
[email protected] | 419-617-6018 | Twitter/X: @Zachary_Holden
This article originally appeared on Mansfield News Journal: OHSAA Soccer: Ontario girls, Ashland boys open season with big wins
Category: General Sports
