MILLBURY — Eastwood could not have been more dominant Monday night.
The scoreboard said otherwise for the better portion of its contest against Bryan.
But the Eagles broke through with three second-half goals en route to a 3-0 win over the Golden Bears in
Division II district semifinal at Lake High School.
Eastwood, which improved to 12-3-4 on the season, will play Northern Buckeye Conference foe Lake (14-3-2)
Saturday in the district finals.
The Flyers, who were 7-1 winners over Wauseon in their semifinal, beat Eastwood 4-3 and 1-0 in the
regular season.
A senior-loaded Eastwood team couldn’t get on the board in the first 40 minutes despite a 9-0 advantage
in shots, including four that were on goal.
Everything started to fall into place with 30:25 left in the game when sophomore Maddie Wilson sent a
left-footed shot into the back of the net, giving the Eagles a 1-0 lead.
“It was a cannon,” Eastwood coach Megan Rutherford said of Wilson’s goal. “She’s not even left-footed. It
was a relief, kind of a breathe of fresh air. Then we knew we’d get a few more.”
“It’s definitely a sigh of relief,” said Reagan Boice, who added two goals in the final 10:53. “Then you
just stand up and hug them. You just keeping going because after the first one goes in it’s just like
rapid fire.”
Eastwood’s lead felt much larger after the opening goal and throughout. The Eagles poured on shot after
shot, finishing with a 21-0 edge in the category.
“It gets frustrating,” Rutherford said. “The girls are getting frustrated after all that possession, all
those great opportunities and not getting the end result. But they stayed positive and stuck with the
game plan.”
“It’s hard because we can’t seem to capitalize on all the shots when we have all the possession,” added
Boice, one of six senior starters for Eastwood. She leads the team with 17 goals this season.
Admittedly, Rutherford wasn’t sure what to expect from Bryan (4-11-3). She hadn’t scouted the Golden
Bears. It showed early, but the Eagles, full of experience, adapted well throughout the game.
“I didn’t know anything about their defense or how good they were or the style they played,” Rutherford
said. “So we had to come up with our plan on the fly.
“We changed our plan a little bit because they had the sweeper,” she added of Bryan. “They play with
their diamond back, so we had to change the balls we were playing, the runs we were making. We had to
make them more of a horizontal run just so we could pull the sweeper out of position. It worked for us.
It opened it up a little bit.”
Eastwood had numerous chances early with shots just missing left, right and above the goal.
Rutherford attributed the senior leadership to Eastwood not getting deterred when missing on so many
prime opportunities.
“It’s nice having the seniors, having the experience to know to have faith in the game plan and to have
faith in their teammates and the coaching staff that we put the right plan together, and good things
would eventually pay off for us.”