Black Knights advance to semis

With the season now in the win-or-go-home stage, Charlottesville wasted no time asserting itself in the Region II girls soccer quarterfinals on Monday night. A quick goal shifted the pressure to the other end of the field, and the Black Knights’ defense made the early lead stand in a 2-0 victory over visiting Briar Woods.
The game was just 26 seconds old when CHS midfielder Kelly Short won the ball from Briar Woods’ Karli Masengale on the left wing. She got to the end line quickly and centered the ball for fellow senior Liza Little, who shot in low, putting CHS on the board and the pressure on the Falcons.
“It showed our team that we’d better get off the bus and play a game, be ready for anything,” said Briar Woods coach Ann Vierkom.
“They just caught us on our heels and took advantage of it.”
Fifteen minutes later, Short played a long ball down the left wing for Emily Perrin, the Knights’ Vermont-bound senior forward. Perrin danced her way into the box and lofted the ball over Briar Woods goalkeeper Melissa Mailley for a 2-0 lead.
Short, a senior winger, had a hand in both goals, while right-side counterpart Little put Charlottesville (16-1) on the board first.
“Both of our wings are really important,” Perrin said. “We use our wings more than any other team I’ve ever played against. We have really fast wings and use them to our advantage. They’re really good at finding open spaces to get the ball.”
Briar Woods (13-5), the Dulles District runner-up, had several chances to get on the board but was unable to capitalize.
The most dangerous shot from the Falcons came after a handball near the Charlottesville box midway through the first half. Brea Hewitt’s free kick squirted through the hands of CHS goalkeeper Clay Eure, who managed to corral the ball before it crossed the goal line.
“That one definitely gave me a big scare,” Eure said. “It just had a weird spin on it and I didn’t have my body behind it, so it got through my hands. Luckily, I was able to recover and get it in time.”
Eure recovered from the gaffe quickly enough to tip another Hewitt free kick over the crossbar two minutes later, while Mailley thwarted several CHS chances at the other end. She denied Perrin late in the first half on a long ball, then dove to hold a header from the Knights’ star early in the second.
Perrin’s speed and size created problems for the Falcons’ defense
throughout the game.
“If I were the coach of the other team, I would put three girls on her,” said CHS coach Fernando Opere.
While the Falcons were able to put pressure on the Charlottesville goal, they could not solve the Knights’ stingy defense. Erica Kiechlin lofted a shot just wide of the post late in the second half, and Eure’s goal was never threatened again.
“The balls bounce on this field quite a bit, and that threw our touch off quite a bit with it being a hard surface,” Vierkom said. “We really just had a hard time finding our niche up front.”
Charlottesville returns to action Wednesday with a road tilt against Brentsville District in the region semifinals. The Knights hope to maintain their opportunistic form as the season winds down.
“Today we finished very well,” Opere said. “We didn’t have many chances, but we finished the chances we had.”