Lexington Catholic routs North Laurel to set up state championship game vs. Sacred Heart
Every year, one of Lexington Catholic’s first girls soccer games of the season comes against Louisville’s Sacred Heart.
It’s an early test of where each team is at and often an indicator of where they can go.
This year, coaches’ poll No. 1 Sacred Heart (23-1-2) and No. 2 Lexington Catholic (22-2-4) will square off in the last game of the season with a state championship on the line at 4:30 p.m. Saturday at Paul Laurence Dunbar High School’s Jon R. Akers Stadium.
Both teams cruised over their semifinals opponents on Wednesday at Dunbar.
The Valkyries defeated No. 4 South Oldham 5-0 in their late afternoon game.
Lexington Catholic then routed 13th Region champion North Laurel 8-0 in a contest cut short by the KHSAA’s mercy rule.
Their attention now turns to Saturday’s finals.
“We’ll have to put pressure on them,” said Lexington Catholic coach Terry Quigley, who is 1-2 against Sacred Heart in state championship games, including a 2-1 overtime win in 2002 for LexCath’s only title and a 2-0 defeat in 2020 in the Knights’ most recent finals appearance. “Their whole thing is they glide through games, moving the ball around and not even looking like they’re feeling any pressure. Sacred Heart may be one of the better teams we’ve ever had in Kentucky.”
Sacred Heart retained a number of players from last year’s state runner-up. Those Valkyries suffered a stunning 4-3 defeat to Bethlehem in the finals. These Valkyries are on a mission.
“We came here last year and came up short. We have one goal: win state,” senior forward Lilly Lund told the Courier Journal. “That’s what we’re going to do.”
On Aug. 16, Sacred Heart throttled LexCath 5-0 in Louisville. The Knights haven’t lost a game to an in-state opponent since.
“I think we’ve changed a lot as a team. We’ve grown a lot,” said LexCath senior forward Sara-Kate Barnes, who scored five goals against North Laurel. “We play a lot different than when we played them at the beginning of the year. We need to come out and fight hard. And we’ve got to finish our opportunities. We won’t get as many of them.”
Knights open the floodgate
Lexington Catholic didn’t lack for opportunities in the first half against North Laurel. The Knights dominated possession and fired 23 shots to the Jaguars’ one.
Barnes scored her first goal on a putback that came to her off the left post midway through the first half. She notched her second 10 minutes later as she ran onto a pass up the middle from Izzy Skinner.
But the 2-0 halftime lead felt worrisome.
“We just weren’t playing up to our ability, and we weren’t taking responsibility for attacking,” Quigley said. “We were making passes when we should have been looking at the goal. It was beautiful because it was very unselfish, but we needed to take on defenders. That’s what we did when we came out in the second half.”
The Knights then unleashed six goals in the first seven minutes of the second half to establish a mercy-rule margin.
Barnes got her hat trick two minutes in. Less than two minutes later Izzy Skinner scored on an assist from Ansley Stephenson for a 4-0 lead. Skinner made it 5-0 unassisted just 1:18 after that. Then, practically out of the next two kickoffs, Barnes scored for 6-0 and 7-0 within five seconds of each other. Emme Peterson’s putback of a long-distance Lily Crist shot ended the flurry and the game with 33:07 to play.
The Knights know they’ll need their best effort Saturday to topple Sacred Heart and capture the program’s second state championship.
“We’ve got one more game to push through,” Barnes said. “We’ve just got to keep fighting.”
Sacred Heart rolls over South Oldham
In a battle of the two most decorated teams in Kentucky girls high school soccer, seven-time state champion Sacred Heart proved to be too much for eight-time champ South Oldham this go-round.
Lilly Lund, a senior Denver commit, delivered a goal and two assists in the 5-0 win. Avery Krupp scored off the first Lund pass 14:50 into the game. Mia Lancaster and Isabella Bostock later added a goal each on assists from Caitlin Chase and Emma Zutterman, respectively, for a 3-0 halftime lead.
Lund fired from long distance to put the Valkyries up 4-0 five minutes into the second half and assisted on Caitlin Chase’s goal for the final margin with just over 21 minutes to play.
The win sends Sacred Heart to its 13th girls’ state finals appearance, the most of any school.
Girls state soccer championship
At Paul Laurence Dunbar
SATURDAY’S FINALS
4:30 p.m.: Lexington Catholic vs. Sacred Heart.
Tickets: gofan.co/app/school/KHSAA.
Streaming: KHSAA.tv or Go.PrepSpin.com (fee associated with each).
This story was originally published October 31, 2024 at 8:31 AM.
