WALES — Tenth-seeded Greely scored two goals in the first three minutes of the second half Thursday, breaking a halftime tie and pulling away to a 6-2 victory against second-ranked Oak Hill in a Class B South girls’ soccer quarterfinal at Fairchild Field.
The Rangers (8-7-1) will be at third-seeded York (11-3-1) in the semifinals.
Logan Pray fed Sawyer Dusch 1:51 into the second half, then assisted Kaci O’Grady 1:09 later to give Greely a 3-1 lead.
Greely Coach Josh Muscadin said his team made a self-adjustment at halftime.
“I always say, high school soccer, sometimes you never know who you’re going to get and who steps up to play. And clearly the first half we did not play the way we know how,” said Muscadin, who told his team at halftime to ” ‘show what you’re capable of doing.’ And I guess it must have sunk in.”
Coach Jeremy Young of Oak Hill (12-3) said he implemented some adjustments after his team was “largely weathering the storm” in the first half.
“I thought we’d have a little more time to sort of work into them. And certainly they came out and scored (less than two minutes) into the second half. So it didn’t quite go the way we wanted it to,” Young said.
Like Muscadin, Young expected to see a different Greely team in the first half after scouting the Rangers’ preliminary-round win over Spruce Mountain.
“I knew it would be coming,” Young said.
The Rangers were able to produce a couple of early corners and force Oak Hill freshman goalie Paige Gonya into two diving saves.
But the Raiders scored first. A defensive stop on a Greely corner turned into a counterattack, and Gabby Chessie found Sadie Waterman, who scored from the left side 23 minutes in.
“All year long we’ve just been able to use our speed and counterattack is a big part of that,” Young said.
O’Grady made it 1-1 less than six minutes later when Pray’s cross from the right was knocked away by the Oak Hill keeper, who then was out of position for O’Grady’s put-in.
Pray and O’Grady connected again to complete O’Grady’s hat trick 16 minutes into the second half.
Mollie Obar’s long shot made it 5-1 Greely three minutes later, and after Emily Dillman answered for Oak Hill, Carly Asherman rounded out the scoring for Greely with 11:41 to play.
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