Soccer: Lady Falcons bounce back into 8-AAAAA picture

FLOWERY BRANCH -- For 54 minutes Gainesville held the lead.

But a pair of crazy bounces in a 90 second span midway through the second half helped Flowery Branch rally for a 2-1 victory in a critical Region 8-AAAAA girls match Thursday at Falcons Field.

The win for the Lady Falcons (9-3-0, 4-1 Region 8-AAAAA) puts them back in the picture for a possible region title. They came into the game trailing Gainesville (8-2-1, 4-1), Heritage, and Loganville in the standings.

Flowery Branch will need some help, however. The Lady Falcons fell to Heritage, 3-2, two weeks ago and will need the Lady Patriots to lose twice.

Still, Flowery Branch owns its fate for no worse than a second place finish playing host to Loganville on April 12.

"This was a big, big win for us," Flowery Branch coach Katie Scali said. "We already had one region loss so we really couldn't afford another one. We're just glad that we did what we needed to do to control our own destiny."

After the Lady Elephants ' Mary-Catherine Dempsey got them on the board quickly blasting in a shot off a corner assist from Margaret Carpenter less than two minutes into the game, it turned into a defensive standoff for nearly an hour of game time. Neither team could muster up much offense in the first half as Gainesville tried to make its early goal stand up.

And it nearly did.

But the Lady Falcons turned up the offensive pressure in the second half forcing two corner kicks and had several runs in the first 10 minutes. The game would turn on one big bounce, however.

Flowery Branch chipped what looked to be a routine ball high into the Gainesville box. But Elephants' keeper Ashlie Gonzalez misjudged it and the Lady Falcons' Madeline McCarthy booted the loose ball into a wide-open net to tie the game with 24:01 left in the game.


Just over a minute later Flowery Branch was awarded a direct kick from 35 yards out and Alex Lee's shot bounced hard off Gonzalez and Jacey Ramey slipped the loose ball past Gonzalez for the lead.

"The wind is a big factor here and we were trying to use it to our advantage," Scali said about the sudden turn of events. "We got the big bounce but someone needed to be there to finish it. On the second one Alex has such a big shot and she put it where we could get a rebound."

Flowery Branch did not sit back defensively after getting the lead. The Lady Falcons continued their offensive pressure only allowing Gainesville one solid scoring chance over the final 24 minutes as they controlled the ball.

Both Lee and Kelsey Read were credited with keeping the Gainesville attackers off stride, particularly Hartley Carter, who was held to just one scoring chance in the game.

"We gave Kelsey the assignment of playing Hartley and I thought she did a great job. She and Alex played huge for us on defense," Scali said.

With the victory Flowery Branch ran its win streak to three and the Lady Falcons have now won eight of their last nine, with the lone loss coming to Heritage.

The loss for the Lady Elephants snapped their five-game winning streak. They had allowed just one total goal during that span.