MARYVILLE – When in doubt, leave it to your Players of the Year.
Hannah Smoot and
Sierra Lee scored goals in the final seven minutes to help Maryville snatch a 3-1 victory from rival Covenant in a Collegiate Conference of the South showdown. Maryville with the win improved to 5-1-4 overall and 2-0-0 in the league, while Covenant is now 6-3-0 and 2-1-0.
Maryville and Covenant played for the 2023 CCS Tournament championship, and Wednesday's match showed that these two teams may once again be the class of the conference.
This contest was for serious goal-scorers only.
Smoot scored twice for the Scots, her first goals in nearly a month to up her season total to four. And Lee after a three-match scoreless streak has now found the net in each of the team's first two conference affairs. She has six for the season and is tied for second in the CCS.
Making Life Easier
Lee was the 2022 CCS Offensive Player of the Year, and Smoot won that honor in 2023.
"When you have two players like that, it makes life a lot easier as a head coach," Maryville's
Pepe Fernandez said. "I figured that out a long time ago."
The Covenant goal belonged to another of the league's top goal-scorers in AnnaLi Weekley, who tallied her fourth of the season in the 78th minute. It was an unassisted effort that shocked the Maryville defense, with Weekley spinning and firing from about 20 yards out to tie the match 1-1.
"We dominated the first half pretty well, and then Covenant came with a lot of energy in the second half," Fernandez said. "The goal we allowed was a little disappointing, but some of that was just fatigue and being a little unorganized."
Smoot's first goal came in the 32nd minute.
Elle Fair played a long pass ahead and put Smoot in the clear. She was one-on-one with the keeper and fired home to the right from 12 yards out.
The home side led 1-0 at intermission.
Champion Response
After Weekley's goal, the home Scots did not take long to answer.
Erin Hudson bounced a pass into the penalty area, and it found a racing Smoot in stride. The lefty settled the ball and slotted home from 6 yards away for a 2-1 lead in the 84th minute.
Maryville looked to be killing clock in the 89th minute when Lee chased down a pass toward the end line left of the goal. She turned toward the center and found enough space to get off a shot to the bottom-right corner.
The win improved Maryville's record to 17-0-4 over its last 21 home matches.
Sydney Mahr made six saves in the match and earned plenty of praise from her head coach.
"Syd had some big moments tonight," Fernandez said. "The thing I liked the best is she talked really well. There were a lot of troublesome situations and, by talking the way she did, the average spectator would not even notice that anything was particularly dire.
"But she sniffed out those situations and communicated really well. I was proud of her for that."
Defensive Growth
The head coach also called out his defensive unit of
Caelin Cole,
Olivia Norris,
Elle Fair and
Erin Hudson for managing the match from the back end.
"Ours is a tough surface to play on because it is so fast and, at night, can be slick," Fernandez said. "It's good for our passing but it's tough on our defenders because it is easy to get wrong-footed by the ball. But they all are great athletes and really tough players. They had such a good game tonight."
Shots favored Maryville 15-10, with Smoot attempting five shots and Lee four. Weekley fired three shots to lead Covenant. Maryville held possession for 62 percent of the time.
Saturday is a Senior Day doubleheader at the MC Soccer Complex. The men host LaGrange (2-6-0, 0-1-0 CCS) at 2:30 p.m., while the women welcome Wesleyan (0-6-0, 0-2-0 CCS) for the nightcap.
