Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
A shot by Eastern New Mexico's Kaitlyn Caro, left, deflects off the foot of Southern Nazarene's Alexus Coxsey and past a diving Ashlynn Pritchett in the second half of Saturday's non-conference game at Greyhound Arena.
Junior Samantha Fabela fires a shot for a goal after getting space against Crimson Storm defender Kiara Rodriguez.
Bailey Bosley sets herself up for the bicycle kick to make it 4-0 late in the contest.
PORTALES — Bailey Bosley wasn’t sure she would do it. Her coach wasn’t sure she could do it.
In a game where most doubt was eliminated, Bosley took out the nanometer of doubt that remained with a bicycle-kick goal that provided an exclamation point to the Greyhounds’ 4-0 win over Southern Nazarene (1-5) Saturday to even their record before entering conference play.
Kierra Diaz, Kaitlyn Caro and Samantha Fabela had already posted tallies in the final 30 minutes before Bosley, a graduate student transfer from Division-I Stephen F. Austin, deflected an 83rd-minute free kick from Fabela into the air, and then hit a right-footed arc that lofted over the head of Southern Nazarene’s Micaela Owen.
“Honestly, I saw it was coming in low,” Bosley said, “and I was just trying to get the ball back into the mix. But it went in.”
Greyhound coach Joshua Smith was one part impressed, one part surprised at the tally.
“I wasn’t so sure she could do that, but we’ve talked about being creative offensively,” Smith said. “Every goal we scored, that was something that we’ve been working on and were able to implement today.”
The Greyhounds (2-2-1) had already put it on ice just under four minutes earlier when Fabela got into a one-on-one with Kiara Rodriguez and made just enough of a move to slip away for an open line of fire.
“It was hard getting around her,” said Fabela, a junior midfielder from El Paso Chapin, “but I had a half-step of space and I just took it.”
Kierra Diaz opened the scoring in the 63rd minute when she got into a one-on-one situation down the right sideline and shook her defender.
Both Smith and Crimson Storm coach Julie Duncan felt like after the scoreless first half, whoever scored the first goal would receive a tidal wave of momentum.
“We have such a young team,” Tucker said. “When you’re playing five to seven freshmen, you’re going to see that. We came out really, really flat in the first half. That’s not who we are.”
Just 10 minutes after that, Caro took a pass from Anahi Hernandez and fired to the right side. The shot might have gone wide right, but it struck a Southern Nazarene defender’s foot and angled past a diving Pritchett.
The Greyhounds scored four goals in a game for the first time since upsetting Midwestern State by the same score in last year’s LSC tournament first round, and the four goals represented Eastern’s best offensive half since an 11-0 rout of University of the Southwest two Septembers ago.
“It’s big for our confidence,” Bosley said. “We were able to put four in the back of the net, and we had scored about that many all season (five entering Saturday).”
The Greyhounds open Lone Star Conference play against Texas A&M-Commerce Friday, and Smith hopes this is just the momentum the team needs heading in.
“For us, we’re a new team in so many ways,” Smith said. “We were coming off a loss to East Central (2-0 on Thursday), which is a team around the same level as (Southern Nazarene). That shouldn’t have happened. We had a wake-up talk, and some of our leaders lit a fire.”
