Round two of the battle of the black and blue in girls soccer took place on Thursday evening as the Miami Trace Lady Panthers (8-5-1, 3-5-1 FAC) hosted the Washington Lady Lions (3-11-1, 0-9 FAC).

After holding a narrow 1-0 lead at the half, Miami Trace erupted for six goals in the second half and came away with a 7-0 shut out victory over their county rivals.

The Lady Panthers lone goal of the first half came from Marian Mara and was assisted by Karleigh Cooper.

Just moments into the second half, Mara scored again, this time assisted by Alli Knecht.

Around the 30 minute mark of the second half, Mara outran the Lady Lion defense and secured the hat trick with her third goal of the contest.

Nora Morrison joined the scoring affair at the 21:23 mark after receiving a picture-perfect pass from Hailey Webster from near midfield.

At the 10:59 mark, Cooper made it 5-0 on a goal off of a corner kick. The ball was kicked by Morrison and deflected to Elyse Day who assisted the goal.

Cooper added a second goal just moments later with the assist coming from Mara.

The final goal of the evening was scored by Mara at the 7:30 mark and was assisted by Day, making the final 7-0.

Miami Trace head coach Chad Tolbert spoke following the victory.

“We know they have a top-notch goalie (Calee Ellars). We told our girls, she is very athletic and gifted. She’s too good of a goalie, she’s long and she can jump. We are not going to be able to score from 25 or 30 yards out. Our bread and butter is our passing. We try to possess the ball. The other team cannot score if we possess the ball. We just told them to be patient and try to work it in, we did that on our goal in the first half. We did a lot better job of that in the second half.

“Kudos to our girls. They have worked very hard in the off-season. They have all bought in.”

Washington head coach Brandan Ellars shared some comments after the contest.

“We’ve struggled, I think this is game number eight that we haven’t scored a goal. We struggle getting the ball up the field, and it seems like when we do have those opportunities, we kind of panic a little bit. We take a shot from further out than we need to, and if we just possess it a little bit longer and get that goalie to commit then maybe we could get those into the back of the net.

“I liked the first half, it was a great first half. The first time we played them this year, I think they had four goals in the first half. I was pleased to come out and play as well as we did there in the first half. We definitely needed to clean some things up in the second half.

“We’re in the part of the season where you start having injuries show up. We were three girls down tonight. There are a lot of variables there that our fighting against us right now. We are doing some things right, we just have to take care of some of the little things, like we did in the first half tonight. We were taking care of the little things and we kept it competitive. We stopped taking care of the little things in the second half and it came back to bite us.”

Miami Trace (9-5-1, 4-5-1 FAC) will travel to Logan Elm (2-9, 1-6 MSL) on Monday and host Zane Trace (7-4-2, 3-0 SVC) on Thursday to close out the regular season.

Washington (3-12-1, 0-10 FAC) has their final regular season contest on Tuesday, Oct. 8 at West Jefferson (1-5-1, 0-2 OHC)

The sectional draw for both Washington and Miami Trace will take place on Sunday, Oct. 6.