Carroll girls soccer seeking district perfection
3/1/2016by Kevin Lonquist

Carroll’s girls soccer program didn’t allow the stormy and gloomy weather impact it much when it came to playing its arch rival Coppell on Feb. 23.

Despite pretty tough weather conditions at Dragon Stadium, Carroll defeated Coppell, 4-2, in a game that was played in a temperature in the 30s and wind chills that drifted into the 20s. But then again, that comes with the territory with a sport that’s played in January and February.

The Lady Dragons (18-1, 8-0 in 7-6A) then easily took care of Richland this past Friday, 8-0. Carroll has already clinched a playoff berth – it has never missed the postseason under head coach Matt Colvin – and is going for another district championship.

Carroll continued its search for a perfect district season as it played at Euless Trinity on Tuesday before returning home on Friday to take on Colleyville Heritage.

With the 12 goals scored last week, Carroll is about is surpass 100 goals for the season. Carroll began the week with 93. And given that Carroll won the first meeting with the Lady Trojans, 8-1, the Lady Dragons could break the century mark on Tuesday. Carroll is averaging nearly five goals per game. At this pace, Carroll is on pace to finish the regular season at 113 goals.

While much of the attention has been paid toward Plano East transfer Ally Griffin, the best thing that happened in the win over Coppell is how senior midfielder Allie Luna arguably played her best game of the season. She scored twice – she’s now into double figures with 11 – and notched the game-winner. Carroll built a 3-1 lead at the half and played the second half even to sweep the season series from the defending Class 6A state champions.

As head coach Matt Colvin has said, this is an offense that is diverse even though Griffin is on a torrid scoring pace. Her hat trick (three goals) against Richland gave her 36 goals for the season. Through Carroll’s first 19 games, Griffin is averaging nearly two goals per game. Not surprisingly, Griffin leads the team with nine game-winning goals.

But it’s one thing to score a lot. It’s another to take the right shot. Griffin has scored on 41 percent of her shots (36-of-88). That means she’s getting the right pass in the right area and usually coming up with a pretty good look.

That’s really the exception to the norm when most of the other players on the roster are somewhat in the 20 percent range on scoring percentage.

In the net

Madison Martin may be feeling the big chill in the net for Carroll. Of course, her prolific offense and suppressing defense really don’t let the opposition produce a scoring chance.

Through her first 16 starts, Martin has only faced 31 shots (allowing nine goals). She allowed two against Coppell. But for the season, Carroll net minders have faced only 40 shots and 12 total goals.

Break it down even further. Carroll has allowed half of those goals in two games. The other six have been spread out over the other 17


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