Sports

Lady Eagles headed to GISA Final Four

• Alex Barfield and Julie Davis score goals as Terrell Academy’s girls soccer team makes it to the GISA Class A/AA Final Four.

Scott Chancey

DAWSON — Terrell Academy girls soccer coach Patrick Cuff admitted to feeling a little nervous.

Skeptical, even.

His Lady Eagles were on the cusp of reaching their first GISA Class A/AA Final Four since 2005 and faced what Cuff considered to be a formidable Holy Spirit Prep team Thursday at home.

One goal by an eighth grader, however, made all those worries disappear.

Alex Barfield scored 16 minutes into the match, and Julie Davis added another in the second half and the Lady Eagles advanced to the state semifinals with a 2-0 win.

“Going to the Final Four is awesome,” said Cuff, who has been the Lady Eagles’ coach since 2006. “I might have been skeptical and nervous, but not in a bad way. I was more excited than anything.”

At 7:30 p.m. Tuesday at Mount de Sales in Macon, the Lady Eagles (15-1) will face the winner from today’s match between Trinity Christian and defending state champion Heritage School.

“This is my first time going so I’m really excited,” Barfield said. “We don’t know what to expect, so we’ll just go out and try even harder.”

Terrell Academy’s goal at the beginning of the year was to make it this far; but now that the Lady Eagles are there, they want to enjoy the ride as long as they can.

“It feels good to be going back,” said Davis, who leads the team in goals scored (34) and was a freshman the last time Terrell Academy reached the semifinals. “It’s good to accomplish that, but we want to make it to the finals.”

The Lady Eagles, coincidentally, lost against Heritage in the 2005 Final Four.

“We didn’t score, like, 10 goals, but we were just trying to win the game,” Davis said of Thursday’s match.

Terrell Academy, which won its first-round match against Arlington Christian, 9-3, on Saturday, became more aggressive after Barfield’s goal, which was the result of a Marlee Locke assist.

“I was trying my best to get us ahead so we could get going,” said Barfield, who even missed a couple days of school this week due to an illness.

Added Cuff: “That right there started the whole offense. Once we saw Alex could go through and that we could dominate on the right side, we were attacking more often.”

Goalkeeper Millie Foster had nine saves, including quite a few close calls.

Holy Spirit Prep’s best chance to get on the board in the match happened when the Lady Cougars’ Brianna Ryce attempted a direct shot from close range. But Foster got her hands on the ball, re-claiming it after it briefly popped out of her hands.

But that was as much danger as the Lady Eagles were ever in.

Foster, heeding Cuff’s advice during practice, stayed deeper in the box, taking less chances going after loose balls and therefore putting herself in position to let defenders like Tonya Horne keep Holy Spirit Prep at bay and make saves like the one she did against Ryce.

“She played a great game,” Cuff said. “There were a couple of shots that they had that were like missiles at her.”

Thursday’s victory would have been by a wider margin if not for some simple bad luck. Joni Burnette took a pass from Barfield and got past a defender only to see her shot hit the left post. A shot by Morgan Donaldson early in the second half landed just on the outside of the net, and Davis — who scored her goal unassisted with 20:56 left — attempted a shot with less than five minutes left that hit the left bar.

The 2-0 lead, however, was all the cushion Terrell Academy needed.

Now Cuff carries the same mindset as his players: Simply reaching the semifinals is not good enough anymore.

“We have to go one game at a time, both of the possible semifinal opponents are good teams,” the coach said. “Now we won’t be satisfied until we reach the championship game.”

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