Lafayette girls learning and adjusting, but remain undefeated

The Lafayette High School girls soccer team has yet to surrender a goal this season.

Thursday evening started slowly for the Lady Commodores, but they would pull away late against Itawamba Agricultural to win 3-0.

It wasn’t until the 17th minute of play when Lafayette got on the board first, a strike by junior Lucy Wilson, her fourth of the short season. In general, the Commodores were able to keep the ball in the Indians’ half of the field for much of the night, but didn’t do their best to capitalize when they had chance early. The Indians play that way though; a look with just one striker and nine in the backfield plus a goalie, a strategy that attempts to minimize scoring.

“They’re really talented and they put tons of numbers behind the ball,” said LHS head coach Melinda Scruggs. “That was something that took us a little bit to solve. We had to figure out how to beat the numbers in the back. At first we weren’t possessing the ball as well. Crossing and finishing is what we like to do and we capitalized there especially in the second half.”

Hudson Lindsay and Lillie Grace McCutchen both scored in the second half to lift the girls to the 3-0 victory.

The game puts the Lady Commodores to 2-0-1 on the season, the tie coming in the opening season game against 6A Tupelo. Scruggs said she always tries to schedule tough teams – it’s a big part of what she credits the team’s state run last year to.

Lafayette pitched a 0-0 tie with Tupelo last week to open the season.

“Tupelo was a great test. It was our first game and their first game. If we played them ten games from now, it would be totally different for both sides,” Scruggs said. “But just getting used to new personnel and new different people in different spots is fun to see.”

The girls do get to play Tupelo again, just not in 10 games. They actually may get play Tupelo again this weekend in the FNC tournament.

Commodore boys pick up first win in penalties

Where the girls game opened slow, the LHS boys soccer game held true – even more so.

Lafayette’s boys and Itawamba Agricultural went to half tied, a back and forth opening frame where both teams had their chances but didn’t capitalize. The game was still scoreless at the end of regulation. Going to penalties, Lafayette goalkeeper Leonel Escobedo made two critical saves, allowing senior Jake Moore to come in and capitalize on the game-winning penalty. Lafayette picked up their first win of the year 2-0 in penalties.

“We’re getting into a little groove I think. Against Tupelo last week, we played a really good game and we had to kind of play long ball against them,” coach Gene Anderson said. “Against North Pontotoc (Tuesday), we kind of stayed in that mentality and didn’t play how we wanted to. Tonight we did better at that, but we still have some things to work on for sure.”

The Commodores had the ball on their end for a good portion of their evening. But in the words of their coach: Lafayette is still learning how to score. That will come with time.

Both the Lafayette girls and boys will play next over this weekend at the FNC Park Showcase.