Holly Springs girls soccer gets conference win against Fuquay-Varina
A whole lot can happen in 21 seconds. The Fuquay-Varina girls soccer team found that out Wednesday night on the pitch of Southwest Wake Athletic Conference rival Holly Springs.
In a scoreless tie, Golden Hawks senior Ava Slovensky scored twice in that span to spark her squad to the 3-0 victory.
Holly Springs upped its record to 2-2 with their first win in three SWAC tries, while Fuquay-Varina dropped its second straight to dip to 3-2 and 1-2.
“Last few games and tonight, we’ve held possession, but the difference was we weren’t converting in the attacking third and when we weren’t we were losing possession in bad spots and teams were counter attacking against us and scoring,” Holly Springs head coach Brian Miller said. “It’s what we worked on in training, making sure counter attacks didn’t happen by maintaining possession and knew the ball was going into the next sooner or later.”
The Bengals had the early runs on goal with freshman Katelyn Laux’s soft shot saved by Holly Springs keeper M.D. Atkins in the fifth minute and freshman Josey Wilson’s breakaway was foiled two minutes later by a tackle by defender Alyssa Poth.
Momentum switched to the hosts soon after and Hawks freshman forward Emily Sapienza took a shot from 35 yards out that was stuffed by F-V keeper Rachel Howard in the ninth minute.
The Hawks continued to press the action, breaking through at the 18:42 mark on a corner kick. Sydney Sizemore placed the ball into the box, where it went by six players before being finished by Slovensky.
After a quick steal on the ensuing restart, Sapienza took control near the end line and threaded a pass to an in-stride Slovensky, who one-timed it into the net with 18:21 on the clock.
The striker gave credit to the two helpers she got.
“First goal was a corner and corners, they take just one special person to put the ball in the net and thank God I had a good ball and I put it in the back of the net,” Slovensky said. “The second goal, it was definitely quite an angle on that pass. Emily is a great player and I’m grateful to have her as a teammate.”
F-V got an excellent chance in the 34th minute, but Trinity Davis’ cross to a streaking teammate was grabbed with a dive by Atkins.
The second half was chippy, with 21 total fouls called, but Holly Springs continued to press the issue getting three shots, but none on frame until the 69th minute.
With three minutes to go, Sapienza was tackled from behind in the box for a penalty kick, and she buried to the left side.
“They wanted it more,” F-V coach Nick Acosta said. “Coach Miller had them ready to play and they were easily the better team tonight.”
This story was originally published March 8, 2017 at 11:13 PM with the headline "Holly Springs girls soccer gets conference win against Fuquay-Varina."