It’s another step in the developing process.
“There has to be a takeaway from a game like this,” Jefferson City coach Scott Blake said after the Lady Jays fell 4-0 to the Father Tolton Lady Trailblazers on Tuesday night at Jefferson City High School. “A win or a loss, good or bad, there has to be a takeaway.”
The takeaway from Tuesday? The Lady Jays didn’t allow a goal in the second half after a change in defensive shape.
“We knew what adjustment we needed to make, we just needed to get to halftime to do it because we’d never done it before,” Blake said.
Tolton tallied the first goal just three minutes into the contest when Emma Mallett tapped a shot into the back of the net.
“When you go down early and you can’t get a quick response, the game can kind of get away from you and this one did get away from us a little bit,” Blake said. “It’s tough when you fall behind early like that, it makes a difference. The early goal can be a killer in any game.
“You hope to get through the first 10 minutes, then evaluate where you’re at.”
The Lady Jays had a great opportunity to tie it 15 minutes into the contest, but Emily McMillian’s blast went off the crossbar and the Lady Blazers keeper was there to make a save after the carom.
Tolton then put the game away with a three-goal flurry in the final 12 minutes of the first half, including two in the final three minutes. Aubrey Willmeth, Macie Parmer and Mallett tallied the goals for the Blazers.
“We knew Tolton would be a challenge, we play them some in the summer and we knew they had soccer talent,” Blake said.
But with the 10-minute break for halftime, Blake thought the Lady Jays could make some adjustments to their defensive shape against that Lady Blazer talent.
“It’s one we never played before, but it helped keep us a little more defensively organized,” Blake said. “We needed to do something against their wide players, because they were stretching it out and making it tough on us.”
The change helped limit Tolton’s scoring chances in the final 40 minutes.
“You can experiment with things like different players and different shapes in the first half of the season so you can have that stuff available later on,” Blake said. “It’s either offensively or defensively.”
And now that the Lady Jays have employed the new shape, it’s a change they could make during a game rather than have to wait until halftime.
“We need to train with it, but we could do it,” Blake said. “There’s no doubt that if we feel like we need to do it again, it’s a trick in the bag that we can pull out.”
Jefferson City had the best scoring chance of the second half, but McMillian had another shot bounce off the crossbar.
“Emily had a good night, she was just unlucky,” Blake said.
Tolton, which was supposed to host the game before Tuesday’s wet weather, is now 1-0.
Jefferson City (1-1) will host Camdenton on Friday. The JV game will start at 5 p.m., followed by the varsity contest around 6:45 p.m.
In Tuesday’s JV game, Tolton defeated Jefferson City 1-0.