It’s been eight years since Western Albemarle’s girls soccer team earned even a share of the Jefferson District regular season crown.
The wait is over.
The Warriors battled Fluvanna County in a physical, rain-soaked regular season finale and picked up a 1-0 victory over the Flucos. The win closed out an 8-2 season, giving the Warriors a co-Jefferson District title with Charlottesville, who also went 8-2, with a pair of losses to the Warriors the only defeats on the year for the Black Knights.
The two teams will now face off in a one-game showdown slated for Wednesday at 6 p.m. at Monticello High.
“These girls have worked so hard and they’ve had a lot of adversity and they’ve overcome it,” said Western coach Jake Desch.
Western controlled the run of play in the first half, but a slew of near misses left the score deadlocked at 0-0 at halftime. Fluvanna freshman goalie Morgan Symmers came up with a number of key stops during the Warriors’ first half assault.
“She’s a great keeper and coming into games like this can be a little bit intimidating,” said Fluvanna coach Tara Garcia. “She had a great showing tonight. With the weather, the ball skips and everything and she got her body behind it.”
Western didn’t waste much time jumping ahead in the second half, with sophomore Alexis Hucek connecting in the first 10 minutes of the half on a rebound off a corner kick that ricocheted out. Hucek collected the ball and quickly ripped it back toward the top right corner from about 10 yards out.
“It’s all about technique with her and we’ve been encouraging her to keep taking chances,” Desch said. “She finally did and she hit a great shot.”
From there, the Warriors held on as Fluvanna stepped things up a notch and created more chances, though the Flucos failed to break through in the final 35 minutes as the Warriors’ defense and goalie Emily Marbury proved up to the task.
“It took us awhile to get started unfortunately,” Garcia said. “Western scored a good goal, she hit the ball really well and then we responded well to that. We played aggressive and hard for the last 35 minutes.”
While Western faces the Black Knights in the one-game playoff while Fluvanna County will host a Jefferson District first round game Friday night.
