The Lowry High School girls soccer team took on Elko at home on Tuesday.
The Indians scored less than three minutes into the contest and held on from there.
The remaining 80 minutes were full of action but no more goals were scored by either team, resulting in a 1-0 Elko victory in this first league game.
“We had some sprains and a shoulder injury today," said LHS coach Ed Partee. "One girl took a shot to the face with a ball also, but they all seem to be OK. We are lucky we have some recovery time, we don’t have to play again for 10 days.”
Lowry goaltender Hannah Growcock had numerous saves throughout the game to keep the score close.
“We weren’t playing soccer tonight, it didn’t come together for us," Partee said. "We have the first one out of the way now, so hopefully from here on out we will go up. The second half was tremendously better than the first half, if we would have played like that in the first half, we probably would have had a lot different score.”
Last weekend the girls started their season playing in the Lake Tahoe Tournament.
The Lady Bucks lost to Carson, Reed, Spring Creek and Lovelock, but gained valuable experience.
“I thought it was an excellent tournament, I would go again in a heartbeat,” Partee said. “It was nice playing a couple of 4A upper division schools. The tournament was preseason for us, so that allowed us as coaches to move people around and see what is going to work best for our season We had a couple of players that did an excellent job, especially playing against upper division schools. To me it goes beyond the field, beyond what happens in a game. How do they practice? How do they carry themselves?”
“The tournament in Tahoe was kind of hard, but we did our best. I have been playing soccer my whole life and I like winning," said LHS senior Zafiro Contreras.”
The Lady Bucks next game is Sept. 7 at Sparks at 5 p.m. The road trip continues on Saturday, Sept. 8, in Reno at North Valleys at noon.
Lowry is back home on Friday, Sept. 14, to play North Tahoe at 5 p.m.
"Overall it is just a learning process for a lot of them," Partee said. "We have a lot of girls who have come up to varsity this year and it is a whole different ballgame. They have the fundamentals down; we just have to reinforce that. They are doing a good job, but we have to keep moving forward. We can’t look at these games that we lose and beat ourselves up over them, let’s get on to the next one.”
