When the Berkshire Badgers girls’ soccer team’s previous leading scorer Evania McCandless graduated last year, all eyes turned to her younger sister Kelly to take on more responsibility to fuel her team. The Berkshire junior forward has taken the reigns and continued doing so when she lifted the Badgers to an 8-0 victory against Newton Falls in the Ohio High School Athletic Association Division V Northeast 4 sectional championship last Thursday evening at Great Lakes Cheese Stadium in Burton.
“I could go and on about Kelly,” said Coach Ian Patterson. “She is a great player overall and does all of the things right and busts her butt on and off of the field and is a great person and great player. On Thursday night, she just really took over and tried to get some of her teammates started but when we missed a couple of shots, she took the ball.”
If the Badgers (9-5-4, 4-0-0) defeat Pymatuning Valley in the district semifinal on Tuesday night, they will advance to the district championship to play either Champion or Hanoverton United on Saturday evening at Austintown-Fitch’s Greenwood Chevrolet Stadium in Youngstown at 7 p.m.
In addition to making their second consecutive district semifinal, it was night for the record books for the Badgers as McCandless broke the school record for most goals in a match with six, surpassing the previous record held by Lexi Boyk and Julia Frank.
“It is definitely nice to leave a legacy here,” McCandless said. “It is definitely a good symbol of what I can do to help start our team.”
Both Boyk and Frank were in attendance at the match tonight and offered their congratulations to McCandless.
“It is awesome so see that these girls keep coming back who were around the program,” Patterson noted. “They just want to be a part of it and see how we are doing and even when I get home, I will check my phone and have three or four messages from alumni saying great game.”
In the first two minutes of regulation, McCandless erased Newton Falls’ early strategy of trying to defend her with a single defender as she scored her first goal from the middle of the box in the first minute of play and added another goal in the second minute when she fired a rocket over the Tigers’ goalkeeper’s head off an assist from senior midfielder Mary Lee, staking Berkshire to a 2-0 advantage.
According to the seven-year coach, he could not even have anticipated a quicker start.
“It was very quick,” he acknowledged. “I had my head down trying to score who had the first goal and by the time I recorded who scored the first goal, we scored another.”
Newton Falls adjusted its defensive strategy and tried to swarm McCandless with several defenders, but that strategy proved futile as well.
McCandless wreaked havoc on the Tigers’ defensive third, scoring four consecutive goals, extending the Badgers’ lead to 6-0.
“My finishing was there finally,” McCandless said. “My teammates also made a lot of chances for me.”
Junior forward Caitlyn Ruchalski added another goal in the 38th minute of regulation, stretching the lead to 7-0 and ended the match early in the second half when she scored her second goal at the 60th minute of play, triggering the postseason mercy rule which provides that a match ends early if the lead grows to eight goals at any point in the second half.
Fueling Berkshire’s offense is something that McCandless is accustomed to, having done so for the first two years of her varsity career while playing a supporting role for Evania. In the wake of Evania’s departure, McCandless has taken more of an active role in scoring and has relished every minute of her new responsibilities.
“She has been waiting for this opportunity for the last two years,” he said. “She was playing center midfielder for us in the past two years and contributing to Evania’s success so now that Evania graduated, she was like ‘Coach can I please play up top this year?’ We let her do that and she has about 30 goals on the year and she is eating it up. She just loves it.”
According to McCandless, she has even surprised herself with the way she has blossomed this year.
“I think it has definitely been better that my freshman or sophomore year, but I think I can still be better as well,” she said.
