East Hamilton and McMinn Central squared off Thursday night for the third time during the 2017 girls’ soccer season- this time for the Region 4-AA crown.
The host Lady Hurricanes won 4-1 win to stay unbeaten against the Lady Chargers.
“Our girls played well,” East Hamilton coach Carrie Hill said. “McMinn Central always works so hard, at times it didn’t feel like we had a three-goal lead. We’d talked about just getting back to fundamentals, and we did a good job of that.”
East Hamilton put its fundamentals to work from the opening whistle, taking a quick 1-0 lead on a Madeline Frank goal. From there, the Lady Hurricanes continued to build their attack with surgical passes all around the field.
With under 10 minutes to play in the first half, that skill was on full display, as Arielle Fortune cleared a ball on defense and sent a long pass ahead to speedy forward Lauren Barcelona. Barcelona then drew the defense toward her as she approached the goal and laid a short pass back to Julia Kaset for the strong finish.