MURRAY – With their over 20 years of dominance in Region 1 soccer, Marshall County soccer has seen the rest of the Region’s level of soccer rise to the occasion in recent years making their route to the 2nd District and Region 1 Tournament championship games more difficult.
Graves County stood in the Lady Marshals way this year stopping their season short in the semi-final round of the district tournament Wednesday at Murray High with a 2-1 win handing them their third district semi-final loss in the past five years.
“It’s obviously disappointing and I told the girls at halftime, the longer you give them hope the more hope they’re going to gain”, Coach Michael Boone said of their 1-0 halftime lead. “We scored the early goal then kind of lost a little momentum, expecting the other goals to come and when they didn’t you see a little panic. We played a little bit differently than we did the last seven games.”
During their two regular season games, the Lady Marshals out-scored the Lady Lakers 8-1 and in the last seven games, they have only given up a total of two goals to opponents.
Senior Brittney Kimbro scored an early goal just a couple of minutes into the game and they would hold the 1-0 lead until the 67th minute of the game when Graves County’s Allye Darnell hit the left goal post, getting the bounce back into the goal to tie the game 1-1. Darnell added the winning goal with 6:50 to play.
“Tonight just didn’t go our way”, Boone said. “Congratulations to Graves for pulling it off. This is probably the most difficult of any of the district semi-final losses because of the expectations going in as a favorite this season.”
“We’ll miss the seniors and nothing I can say will make them feel better but at the same time, not many players when they graduate can say they won two regional championships.”
The Lady Marshals end their season with a 12-5-2 record. Graves County will play Murray tonight for the 2nd District Championship.
