GLASGOW — There’s still one more round to go between Bowling Green and Greenwood.
Greenwood quickly took care of business of Logan County, earning a Region 4 title appearance with a 9-0 win over the Lady Cougars.
Offensively, it was a night to remember for the Lady Gators and night to forget, defensively, for Logan County. Greenwood out shot the Lady Cougars 37 to 1. All in all, seven different players tallied a goal for Greenwood. Five of those players added an assist, which the shows the ball movement and unity on offense for Greenwood coach Zach Salchli’s group.
Elizabeth Carter, Kylie Tisdale, Ellie Belcher, Elise Fenno, Annabel Justice, Anne Logan Perkins and Sarah Scott each found the net in Wednesday’s semifinal.
“One of the things was we wanted to find scorers and for the second night in a row we found multiple scorers and multiple girls taking attempts at goal,” Salchli said. “That’s really important to us. We did some different rotations up top to see some different combinations and they were working.”
The Lady Purples had a night of their own as well, although the Lady Scotties of Glasgow made them earn each goal in the 8-0 matchup.
Glasgow goalkeeper Paige Burd had to deal with 23 first-half shots from the Lady Purples, finishing with 16 saves in the first 40 minutes.
“Paige (Burd) has been our wall at the back all season. She’s made save after save,” Glasgow coach Scott Zettlemoyer said. “We just made probably the region champions play an entire game that they didn’t think they were going to have to play.”
Whitaker Buchanan, who ended the night with three of Bowling Green’s eight goals, was impressed with Burd’s performance.
“Their keeper came out and she made some great saves and their defensive line also came out tight,” Buchanan said. “So we kind of had a slow start and once halftime hit, we just talked about spreading out and getting everybody wide and getting the crosses in.”
The opposing coach was also impressed.
“I thought Paige did a really nice job for them in the goal, made a lot of really nice saves,” Bowling Green coach Lisa Correa said. “This field played a little slower as well, so we had to adjust to that. We were knocking it around, we just didn’t seem to have our A-game on our finishes tonight.”
Bowling Green and Greenwood will meet for the sixth straight season in the Region 4 title game. The Lady Purples have gotten the best out of the rivalry recently, but the championship game should be a shootout.
“It’ll be a battle as every game is between Bowling Green and Greenwood,” Salchli said after the win on Wednesday. “It’ll be a fun night. I think we have worked out a lot of stuff. Missing Anna obviously was a blow early, but I think this week we’ve worked through some stuff and found some people to step up. I’m really excited to kind of see how that looks tomorrow night.”
