Coming off the team’s first ever state trophy last year when they took 4th place, the EHS girls soccer team had grand goals coming into their season and their home opener against Triad. After they lost to Triad – an out-of-conference rival – during the indoor season, junior Gabby Thompson knew she wasn’t going to let them sour the team’s home opener March 20.
“It was a really important game for me,” she said. “They beat us in indoors, and so my competitiveness could not let that happen again, so I had to take care of business tonight.”
And take care of business she did, as Thompson led the way with two of the Tigers goals in their 4-0 win, including the inaugural goal of the season midway through the first half when she drove straight past the diving Triad goalie, leading to an exuberant celebration with the full team.
“I’ll definitely remember the team celebrating after I scored,” she said. “That’s just something that was just so fun to me and really important.”
A few minutes later, the floodgates started to open when Thea Dimitroff took a corner kick in front of the sun setting over the Tigers home field and junior Anna Maxim planted a header in the corner of the goal past the falling goalie.
After scoring three goals last season, Maxim took the injured senior Mea Hook’s place in the midfield and came into the season with a unique goal: score a header goal. And she did it in the first half of the first home game of the season.
“It felt really good because it was one of my goals last season to do it, and then I got hurt so it was cool to come out at the beginning of the season and do it,” she said.
By the time the Tigers headed to the locker room up 2-0 at halftime, it was clear that the team’s chemistry had drastically improved since losing their season opener 1-0 to Columbia on March 18.
“Last game we weren’t connecting very well, and we needed to build team chemistry, and we were really on it tonight,” senior captain Blakely Hockett said. “We just have better chemistry, we made sure we shared the ball more, and we were more calm and patient on our passes.”
To build chemistry after the loss, the team had to clear their mind of the mistakes from Columbia and come in knowing what they needed to do to win.
“I just came into the game with a very strong positive mindset and all the mistakes from last game, they took the best of me, so this game I just had to brush them off,” Thompson said.
Thompson buried her second goal of the game just seven minutes into the second half, and then almost had a hat trick a few minutes later when her shot clanged off the crossbar.
With dusk and the game clock slowly fading away up 3-0, the team got one more moment to celebrate with only two minutes left when junior Addie Greenwood converted a dead ball free kick for her first-ever career goal.
“There’s a lot of tension between the two teams so it really felt great to win,” Maxim said. “[We were] super excited in front of the scoreboard after the game, just as a team the vibes were really high.”
With the fourth goal, the Tigers secured their largest margin of victory over Triad in over a decade and kept their at least a decade long streak of winning their home opener alive.
“It feels great; I’m happy to be back,” Hockett said. “This group of girls is awesome, and I know we’re going to do great this year and we’re just now starting.”