OREGON – The 2017 girls soccer season saw the Lady Giants put a much-improved product on the field which translated into a .500 regular season record. In an ideal world, the Lady Giants would have been rewarded for their play with a better district draw.
But that wasn’t the case.
Ross drew the TRAC champion, Clay, who promptly ended the Lady Giants’ season 6-0 Thursday night.
“Just based on our district, it’s tough,” Ross coach Phil Collison said. “If you’re anywhere below the top 10, you’re going to draw one of top six teams in Northwest Ohio. Perrysburg, Anthony Wayne, Notre Dame, St. Ursula or Clay, those are all teams that don’t lose a lot of matches.”
Ross’ season ends with a record of 7-8-2, a nice step forward for a program that went 5-11 last year and hadn’t won a TRAC match since 2011.
“The season, in general, I think the girls did a really good job, worked really hard it was a vast improvement,” Collison said. “And we’re hoping it continues in this direction.”
While Ross’ improvement this season showed the Lady Giants how far they’ve come, they also knew the odds they faced against the powerful Eagles. Collison said his girls wanted to go out playing hard and, despite the result, they did just that.
“I thought they did a great job,” Collison said. “I think they worked hard. They had a great time, they had great spirits. They worked hard the whole game and you’re happy to see that. At no point in time did they give up and they were really happy with each other after the match.”
The Lady Giants will be saying goodbye to seven seniors, all of whom played important roles in Ross’ progression this season, in Miranda Schetzer, Mary Miller, Victoria Miller, Haley Guthrie, Hailey Taylor and Addison Burmeister.
“They played a big role in it, just with their leadership alone,” Collison said. “We had a good group of juniors as well but I think their leadership and everything like that kind of elevated everybody to want to take their game to another level.”