Roswell handles Lady Cats

Eric Butler: CNJ correspondent

There was a whole lot of clangin’ going on at the south end Saturday afternoon. But the sounds of soccer balls ricocheting off the framework of the Roswell goal never translated into goals for Clovis, which fell 4-1 in a girls high school contest at Yucca Junior High.

Early in the second half, the score was only 2-1 and Clovis several times came close to knotting the score.

The first occasion came when a Roswell defender tried to pass back to Coyotes’ goal keeper Brittany Thompson with seven minutes elapsed after intermission. The ball, instead, went high and smacked squarely off the top crossbar and bounced back into play.

The ‘Cats couldn’t capitalize on that instance nor on a sequence eight minutes later.

With 25 minutes left in the game, Jordan Garrett booted a penalty kick into the lower left bar of the Roswell goal. A Clovis rebound shot immediately afterward hit off the right post as the Coyotes survived the onslaught.

“There was a lot of noise coming off it, but none of it was coming our way,” Clovis coach Larry Jones said. “It’s just one of those things where one bounce this way or the other and it’s an entirely different game.”

Instead, Clovis (2-12) only got one more real good chance the rest of the way — when Garrett shot high after a nice penetrating run into the teeth of the Roswell defense by Callie Rush late in the game.

The Coyotes, meanwhile, extended the lead to 3-1 on a shot by Megan Corn with 18:21 remaining. Roswell got one more, with 4:51 left, when Alyssa Hickey launched a free kick from 35 yards out high into the Clovis goal.

Hickey also had the game-changer to break a 1-1 tie late in the first half.

After a Roswell (6-11) shot bounced high to — and then away from — Wildcats’ keeper Chassidy Kruger, Hickey then converted an easy header for a goal with only two seconds left before halftime.

“In five more seconds, you figure if they don’t get the goal it changes the momentum of the game,” said Jones, whose squad will open district play at home against Carlsbad Tuesday night. “They don’t get that goal, hey you’ve got a different outlook.”

“This is the third meeting we’ve had with Clovis this year. They are consistently getting better,” Roswell coach Rhonda Moore said. “They’re improving a great deal over the course of the season and that’s really nice to see.”