The Lady Bearcats played the Pell City Lady Panthers Saturday morning. / Nick Griffin
CULLMAN – The Cullman Lady Bearcats went 0-3 in this year’s Shamrock Invitational, falling to Homewood 4-0, East Limestone 2-0 and Pell City 2-0. Even though the results weren’t what the team wanted, head coach Jacob Brown said he was happy to be able to get his young team some time on the field with a lot of quality opponents.
In the East Limestone matchup, the Lady Indians struck first in the first half with 17:20 remaining when Alana Spears put one in in the back of the net past the Lady Bearcats' Gracie Barksdale, and five minutes later, Stefani Fleagle scored from the left side of the net to make it 2-0. Neither team took a lot of shots at the net as the game got very physical. And it got more physical in the second half as a missed call led to words being exchanged between both sides and Cullman's coach got a warning.
The Lady Bearcats looked to get back in the game and had a few chances to get some goals, but East Limestone's Reagan Embry made some big saves to keep Cullman off the scoreboard. Adrianna Rodriguez played big and didn't allow a goal in the second half.
On Saturday morning against Pell City, the Lady Bearcats dropped their final matchup. Cullman was able to maintain possession for a lot of the first half but couldn’t capitalize with enough shots on goal.
The Lady Panthers got out to a quick 1-0 advantage with a corner kick that was headed into the back of the net by a crossing Pell City forward. The Lady ‘Cats kept the lead at one until the six-minute mark of the first half when the Lady Panthers scored on a free kick that bounced in off the crossbar.
Cullman tightened up defensively and kept Pell City scoreless in the second half but couldn’t generate enough scoring opportunities to get back into the game.
“The first game we played was against Homewood and Homewood’s the best team in the state. They’re the favorite to win it and we held them 0-0 at halftime so we proved that we can play with the best in the state; however, we haven’t proved that we can play a full game as hard as we can,” Coach Brown said. “We’re very inconsistent, a lot of that is due to youth obviously and at the end of the day if you don’t score, you don’t deserve to win, so it’s a good life lesson for them. Hopefully they learn from it, they listen and really, they just need to learn from their mistakes and keep on going because at the end of the day all that matters is the playoffs. Success is there if they want to take it, it’s just matter of whether or not they take the initiative and want it enough.”
The Lady Bearcats will be back in action when they travel to take on Fort Payne March 16.
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