MEDINA – Madison’s girls’ soccer team is about halfway through the season with a 4-1-2 record.
One of those two ties came on Monday when the Lady Mustangs and South Gibson held each other scoreless.
But coach Jeremy Young likes how far the team has progressed this season.
“We lost four starters in last year’s senior class, three of them on defense, so that was something we had to work on a lot in the offseason and really are still working on now,” Young said. “We even changed how we draw our defense up to put our more experienced players in the best position to succeed.
“And that worked in this game. South Gibson did a lot of rotating and was able to get a lot of shots on goal more than we did, but we were able to make sure that most of them weren’t high percentage shots.”
The closest South Gibson came to scoring was on a penalty kick in the last few moments of the game. Fortunately for Madison, the kick went wide left, keeping the game scoreless.
The way the Lady Mustangs fought throughout the match was a microcosm of how their season has gone to this point.
“We’re playing up in class whenever we can,” Young said after the Class A Lady Mustangs had just played the AA Lady Hornets. “And we’re competing well and winning.
“The girls do a good job of executing our plan, and our plan has worked well so far. But I want us to be as tested as possible so that if and when we make it so far into the postseason that we run into one of those tougher teams, it’s not anything we haven’t dealt with before.”
Mary Kinsley Nye, Ximena Acosta and Ava Torres lead the Lady Mustangs offensively with six goals scored apiece. Lola Greenway has five assists. Olivia Bynum has taken over the role of goalkeeper and has 31 saves.
In addition to South Gibson, other bigger schools Madison has faced include Munford, Crockett County and Henry County – teams Madison beat. Their one loss was against Houston, 9-0. There are also still games against Memphis East and University School of Jackson remaining.
“I’m looking forward to the second half of this season just to see how much further this team can progress before we’re done,” Young said. “Because our defense is essentially clogging up the middle of the field and forcing teams to either go around us or kick it over our heads to their teammates.
“And both of those are tough to do so far, and we’ll build on that and try to get even better for the postseason.”
Brandon Shields, brandon@jacksonpost.news
