Cowgirls split their games on the pitch

The Crook County High School girls soccer team rebounded from a tough loss to Estacada with a 6-0 shutout victory over Madras Thursday afternoon in Prineville.

Crook County took 39 shots in the game, with 30 on goal. June Conner scored a goal, Anna Bales finished with a pair of goals and Emily Ruiz had a hat trick with three goals in the match.

"Our talk pregame was to remember why we play,” Crook County head coach Mary Buell said. “We play for the love of the game and the love of our team. We focused on having fun and playing beautiful soccer. Playing soccer we can be proud of, win or lose.”

The Cowgirls were in control throughout the match, dominating time of possession and constantly forcing the ball into the Madras side of the field.

With the victory Crook County improves to 2-2 in Tri-Valley Conference play and 4-2-2 overall. However, the Cowgirls fell from fourth to 13th in the power rankings. Madras has still not won a match this year and falls to 0-4 in league and 0-7 overall, while remaining at 29th in the power rankings.

The Cowgirls have an important week ahead as they go on the road to take on Gladstone, 2-1-1, 2-3-2, on Monday and The Dalles, 4-0, 7-1, on Wednesday.

Monday's match is scheduled for 4:15 p.m., while Wednesday's match is set to begin at 4 p.m.

Falling to the Rangers

The Crook County High School girls soccer team was in control for most of the contest on Oct. 1, but in the end a pair of defensive lapses proved costly as the Cowgirls fell 2-1 to the Estacada Rangers in Prineville.

“The girls played pretty soccer,” said Crook County head coach Mary Buell. “They possessed the game. They had an insane amount of shots. Estacada has a phenomenal goalkeeper. She was first team last year and she will probably be first team this year, but we have to control what we can control, and for us today that was energy. We got lethargic.”

The Cowgirls put constant pressure on the Rangers the entire first half, taking 14 shots before the break, including 13 that were on goal.

However, Crook County was able to find the back of the goal just one time, a goal by Emily Ruiz about 10 minutes into the contest.

“The first half we had 14 shots and only one of them was off target,” Buell said. “They were actually pretty solid, but we didn't follow up on them and we needed to follow. We just watched after the shots happened.”

Crook County continued to get shots in the second half, but they were mostly from much farther out away from the goal.

“The second half, they were weak from way too far out,” Buell said. “They needed to take the extra touch. Take the time to take the extra touch and really set it up, because we didn't really challenge that goalkeeper in the second half.”

Estacada's Ren Suo scored early in the second half to tie the match. Although the Rangers did have more possession in the second half than they did in the first Crook County was still able to control the time of possession. For the contest the Cowgirls had the ball 57.4 percent of the time compared to 42.6 percent of the time for the Rangers. In addition, the Cowgirls finished with 22 shots compared to just four for the Rangers.

However, late in the contest the Rangers scored the go ahead goal, this time on a shot from nearly straight in front by Karina Richards.