It was certainly a different experience for Perryville girls’ soccer coach Jerry Fulton and his team this past weekend at the Class 2 state tournament.
It wasn’t one that they particularly enjoyed.
Perryville fell to Pleasant Hill 2-0 in the third-place game on Saturday to claim fourth place in Class 2. In all, Perryville was outscored 6-0 in the two games, after falling to Orchard Farm 4-0 on Friday in the state semifinals. The Pirates had been shut out just twice all season before the state tournament, including a 0-0 tie against Fredericktown in the Hillsboro Tournament on April 12.
“We still came home and put something in the trophy case that had never been accomplished by the girls’ program, however unfortunately it wasn’t the one trophy that we wanted,” Fulton said. “I don’t know if it was the pressure or never being on that stage before. I‘m very still proud of what we accomplished this year and the teams we played were very good.”
That couldn’t have been any more evident when the Chicks struck early, finding the back of the net just 6:15 into the game when Chaney Gray headed in a ball assisted by Lydia Mannino. Ava Rogers would score the final goal on a rebound from a free kick that was tipped up in the air twice by Perryville sophomore goalkeeper Brooklyn Moll with 26 minutes left in the game.
Perryville played better against Pleasant Hill, than they did against Orchard Farm the day before, but Fulton still felt like something was off most of the two games. Pleasant Hill outshot Perryville 11-4.
“It felt like everything was off,” Fulton said. “Maybe it was the temperature on the turf field, but at this point we are just making excuses. We just didn’t play our best game. It was probably a mixture of both offense and defense, but if you look at the third-place game, Cloey Richardet probably had the most shots on goal and she is a defender. Which is not how we set out to play.”
It was a different experience for Fulton as well on the bench as he had been to the final four three times with the boys program, each time reaching the championship game, and winning it all in 2014.