Lady Wolves fall 2-1 at El Dorado

EL DORADO — Lake Hamilton couldn’t back a strong game from freshman goaltender Brianna Tracy-Withers with enough offense to prevent a 2-1 El Dorado victory Monday in the 6A-West girls soccer tournament.

“She did an amazing job,” said Lake Hamilton coach Stacey Scott. “The El Dorado coach even talked to me about her after the game. I mean, yes, she made some mistakes, but she’s a ninth grader out there playing against seniors. She had a couple of saves that you would have thought were in. She was able to get a hand on them and deflect them.”

Lake Hamilton’s only goal came in the last five minutes, Caitlynn Porter scoring off a corner by Logan Keener. El Dorado led 1-0 at halftime and made it 2-0 in the 48th minute.

“That’s what happens when you come out slow,” Scott said. “We had a couple good ball movements. In the first five minutes, we had a beautiful cross, but we blew it and missed the whole goal. We had a lot of others that we just threw in there, but that was a good shot on goal. It should have been 2-2 or even 3-2.”

On Porter’s goal, “I had moved more of our defense up to play offense late in the game,” Scott said. “We only had two defenders back at that point.

“El Dorado is good … always good, and I think that we just had some mental blocks up. I think that we can play with them. We had our chances, but we’ve done that a lot this season.”

The Lady Wolves (9-8) play Greenwood at 5 p.m. Thursday, the match moved to Hot Springs’ Reese Memorial Stadium because of the Class 6A track meet at Lake Hamilton. The winner advances to the state tournament in Siloam Springs next week.