{"id":7275,"date":"2023-09-29T06:40:21","date_gmt":"2023-09-29T10:40:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/?p=7275"},"modified":"2023-09-29T06:40:24","modified_gmt":"2023-09-29T10:40:24","slug":"4-bellmont-uses-impressive-first-half-to-finish-season-with-victory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/2023\/09\/29\/4-bellmont-uses-impressive-first-half-to-finish-season-with-victory\/","title":{"rendered":"#4 Bellmont uses impressive first half to finish season with victory"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Retaining nearly 80% possession in the opening half of Thursday’s season finale at Heritage, the Bellmont Braves continued their winning streak with three goals from three different players in a 3-1 victory. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Knowing full well that his team will undoubtedly have to face the Patriots again if Bellmont is to win another sectional title, head coach Steve Lee paid Heritage plenty of respect in Thursday’s non-conference match. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Braves finished off an unbeaten 7-0 record to take the NE8 Monday and the Patriots just finished wrapping up the ACAC title for the second year in a row by dominating Woodlan and also completing an unbeaten conference season. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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That set up Thursday’s showdown between the two conference champions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Nin Way stands at midfield, hoping that her team will win back possession and give her a chance to show her talents. Way’s touches were minimal as the Braves won the battle in the midfield most of the night. <\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The Braves looked for ways to neutralize Heritage’s main threat, Nin Way, who is one of the state’s leading scorers with 31 tallies. Coach Lee’s gameplan was simple: use his midfielders to control the game and possession. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It worked like a charm. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Much of the possession enjoyed by Heritage was interrupted by Gwen Laurent Thursday. She kept her head up, picking out teammates downfield. Laurent had an assist in Thursday’s 3-1 win at Heritage. <\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Way was frustrated much of the night and had less than a dozen touches on the Braves’ side of the field in the first half. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lilly Alberding’s early goal added additional urgency for the home side, who were visibly frustrated at not being able to work the ball forward to their star. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Heritage goalie Corinne Bowers was awfully busy Thursday against the Bellmont attack. <\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Corinne Bowers was excellent in goal, however, and the Heritage back line played admirably under a barrage of shots from all directions. Bowers faced 24 total shots in the game. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Arabelle Laurent and Carly Gilbert put the Heritage back line under tremendous pressure throughout the night Thursday. <\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

With the field seemingly running downhill toward Bowers in goal, especially on the lightning-fast turf, it was corner kick after corner kick swinging into the box. The Braves took a 2-0 lead on an “excuse me” header by Arabelle Laurent that somehow found its way into the back of the net over Bowers. Gilbert scored the assist with her well-placed corner kick. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Arabelle Laurent is congratulated by her teammates after scoring against Heritage Thursday. <\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Bellmont enjoyed their best spell of the match after the second goal despite coach Lee making more substitutions to keep his squad rested and rotated. Lee was also keen to give all his girls as much playing time on the artificial surface as possible. The Braves could face the same situation this year as they had last year when they advanced to the regional final playing on grass before switching to the IHSAA-mandatory surface for the biggest game of the year against an opponent who regularly plays on the fast green stuff. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Braves got on the board again just before halftime when Anna Ruble (pictured below)<\/strong> rifled home her second goal of the year past Bowers, more or less sealing the fate of the game before 40 minutes had run off the clock.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Patriots did score a consolation goal in the second half, but the result was about as much as coach Lee could ask for, with his team handing a 3-1 loss to a team that entered the match 11-2. They did it without getting a goal from their star goalscorer, Carly Gilbert, who instead had two assists as the team got goals from three different players. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Carly Gilbert was as dangerous as ever Thursday, scoring two assists in the first half. The margin would have been even greater for the Braves, but Gilbert hit the woodwork twice, including on this breakaway. <\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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The Patriots will have to go back to the drawing board to change their fortunes if they meet the Braves again in the Norwell sectional final. They put just two shots on target against Bellmont goalie Taylor Louis. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Braves will play Marion on Tuesday at 7 p.m. The Giants have just two wins all season and will be no match for a team with semi-state title hopes. Advancement by the Braves would pit them against the winner of a very competitive match between Woodlan and Norwell. That semifinal would take place on Thursday, while Heritage should have no problem in the other semi against 0-16 New Haven. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Ava Smith and the Heritage Patriots will face a much different side in their sectional opener before they hopefully get another shot against Bellmont.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Follow WZBD all postseason long for full coverage of local high school soccer. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Retaining nearly 80% possession in the opening half of Thursday’s season finale at Heritage, the Bellmont Braves continued<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7287,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[13,15,51,50,26],"class_list":["post-7275","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","tag-bellmont","tag-featured","tag-heritage","tag-soccer","tag-sports"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/wzbd.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/DSC_0315-scaled.jpg?fit=2560%2C1696&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7275","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7275"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7275\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7287"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7275"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7275"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7275"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}