KC girls soccer returns to D-9 title game with 4-0 win
KARNS CITY — Sporting only two seniors, Karns City has a young girls soccer team. The program’s streak of success has lived on for quite a while.
The Gremlins have reached the District 9 championship game for more than 20 successive years. They got there again Thursday night with a 4-0 Class 1A semifinal win over Brookville at Diehl Stadium.
Top-seeded Karns City (15-4) will face the Port Allegany-Brockway winner for the district crown Wednesday at a site and time to be determined.
“It’s different when you have a young team,” KC coach Tracy Dailey sad. “The new players have to get used to the way we do this and learn our system. But this is a great group because these girls have so much versatility. We can switch things around when needed.”
The Gremlins switched things up against Brookville (9-9) to begin the second half Thursday. Karns City took a 1-0 lead into halftime - freshman midfielder Katelyn VanDyke scoring the lone goal at the 17:02 mark - before changing their formation to begin the second 40 minutes.
The result was three KC goals in the first seven minutes.
“We changed the formation to get Phoebe (Brandon) out wider on the right and Hannah (Dailey) out wider on the left,” Coach Daily said. “That opened things up for us.”
Brandon, a sophomore forward, scored a goat at the 38:25 mark of the second half, lofting a shot from 25 yards out that eluded Raider goakeeper Ally Wilson and landed in the left corner of the net. Brandon set up the Gremlins’ final two goals on cross passes at 34:10 and 33:35.
She sent a pass along the turf to junior Layla Colsey, who was alone in front of the net ad buried her shot for a 3-0 lead. Less than a minute later, Brandon lofted a pass to sophomore Bree O’Donnell, who was alone in front as well and drilled the ball into the net.
“We came out with a lot more focus in the second half,” Brandon said. “We had to finish our scoring chances. We didn’t do that in the first half.”
No. 5 seed Brookville reached the district semifinals with a 2-0 win over Ridgway earlier in the week. The Raiders dd not register a shot on net against KC, however, while the Gremlins had 21 shots on goal. Wilson made 17 saves, including two leaps to snare shots from just under the crossbar.
KC had six corner kicks, Brookville none.
“Ally is usually our strike and is one of our best players,” Brookville coach Shawn Castellan sad. “Tonight, we knew we and to defend our home, so we put her in goal. She did a great job.“