Allison Kolhouse
The Columbus North girls soccer team had their backs against the wall early on against Roncalli, but they quickly charged right back.
The Bull Dogs fell behind, but then they responded with four unanswered goals in the first half. The Class 2A No. 16 Royals climbed back in the second half, but the lead was big enough for North to hang on for a 4-3 girls soccer win Thursday night at the BCSC Soccer Complex.
“Playing against higher-level teams, it’s nice to see some adversity and see if the girls can fight through that, and they did tonight,” North coach David Young said. “We learned a lot about ourselves in that 40 minutes in the first half, but we also learned a lot about ourselves the last 40 minutes, too. We know we’re going to give up goals against higher-level teams, and it’s, ‘How do you respond?’ and we responded really well. We responded like a mature team would.”
The Bull Dogs (5-1) fell behindin the 20th minutes when Roncalli (4-3-1) was awarded a corner kick that took a deflection and landed right at Brooklyn Ahaus, who put in the net for the 1-0 lead.
The lead didn’t last long. A minute later, North had a corner kick. Avery Baker kicked a great ball into the box that was touched and looked to past the goal line, but after a couple of deflections that followed, Allison Kolhouse cleaned it up to put the ball in the net to level the game at 1-1.
The Bull Dogs took the lead in the 28th minute when Baker sent another corner to the far post, and a hand-ball gave them a penalty kick, which Kolhouse converted for a 2-1 lead. A minute later, Grace Merritt added an insurance goal when she floated a kick from just outside the box that was out of reach of the Royals goalkeeper to increase the lead to 3-1. Grace Bethuram gave the Bull Dogs their fourth goal with less than 20 seconds left in the first half to make it 4-1 at the break.
“The first few minutes took us a while to settle in, but that goal woke us up and made us realize we need to step up and work together. We really played together as a team, and we were able to settle in,” Kolhouse said.
Roncalli scored goals in the 51st and 70th minutes to keep the match within reach, but North hung on for the win.
Through seven games this season, more than a dozen girls have contributed at least one goal, one assist or both for the Bull Dogs.
“The one thing I really like about this team is, we don’t rely on a single player, a singular player that is going to take over a game and score 30 goals in a season,” Young said. “We have a bunch of girls that love each other. They want to play the game. They love playing the game, and they want to win.”
