Smith's goal leads Jackson girls soccer team past St. Vincent

St. Vincent's first yellow card of the season proved costly.

Senior Mallory Tucker picked up the card after getting tangled with a Jackson player as they fell to the ground just to the left of the box Friday.

Jackson's Victoria Smith, one of two seniors on the roster, scored off a rebound of the ensuing free kick to lift her team to a 1-0 victory on senior night.

"I just was there, ready for the ball to come to me," Smith said. "It bounced off the post and I saw it, so I reacted. When you've played for long enough, you know where you have to be and where the ball will probably end up based on where it is on the field."

Jackson coach Justin McMullen said his team's strategy on the free kick differed from a corner kick despite a similar position on the field.

Jackson goalkeeper Sarah Blanton stops a St. Vincent shot during Friday's game in Jackson. Check out more photos from the game at semoball.com. (ADAM VOGLER)

"We want to try to drive the ball to the post there, and with a lot of people going in the box there, when you're going toward the goal, anything can happen if you get the ball deflecting off of you," he said. "It happened to hit us first then hit the post and hit us again."

Jackson's initial shot rang off the post just below the crossbar, and Smith was able to head a low shot past St. Vincent goalkeeper Katie Mattingly with 24 minutes, 1 second left in the second half.

"I'm used to heading the ball, so I usually try to aim for the corners," Smith said. "So it's just instinct for me to go to the corners."

McMullen said the plan on the free kick was to create traffic inside the box and hope for deflections.

"Everything comes good when you put the ball in the box with that kind of speed on it behind it instead of lofting the ball up," he said. "You drive it down a little bit and it becomes a little bit difficult to kick it out."

St. Vincent forward Courtney Blandford gets over Jackson junior Jordan Myer for a header during St. Vincent's 1-0 away loss to Jackson Friday, May 4. (ADAM VOGLER)

St. Vincent coach Dusty Wengert did not lament his player being whistled for the yellow card.

"It's a good, aggressive play," he said. "I didn't really see the play. I asked Mal, and she said some kind of extracurricular stuff happened after the fall, and Mal's smarter than that. It's all right to get a yellow every once in a while. I'm not one of those coaches who tells his girls to back off."

St. Vincent (19-3) appeared slower after Smith's tally on the humid afternoon.

"It did take the energy out of us," St. Vincent senior Abby Lappe said. "Since I play mainly offense, I just try to do as much as I can to get the team motivated again. I know if they see me working hard up here, they're going to want to step up and work hard. I just do everything I can personally to get the team motivated."

Jackson (11-6) was the team entering the game with extra motivation after losing to St. Vincent 2-1 on April 25. Jackson managed to slow down its opponent's offense for much of Friday's rematch.

St. Vincent's Kayla Seabaugh, right, gets a pass around Jackson's Kaitlyn Crites during Friday's game.

"They just play really fast and they all get in the right position right away," Lappe said. "They all have someone open and ready and always someone talking. They just move quickly so we don't have a chance to step up on them."

Jackson's plan was to possess the ball as much as possible to avoid St. Vincent's dangerous counterattacks.

"We just keep on moving the ball a lot and switch the fields," Jackson senior Erin Eakens said. "It runs them out and gets them tired."

When St. Vincent did manage to create scoring chances, freshman keeper Sarah Blanton bailed out her team. She gobbled up a shot in close from Kayla Winkler with just more than 27 minutes left in the second half, and she came out of the box to clear a ball with less than five minutes left.

"At this point in the season, I don't look at her as a freshman," McMullen said. "I really look at her as someone who is getting between there and is going to get the job done for us."