Bruins blow out Gators, wait for NCHSAA playoffs

The girls soccer season is far from over for Beddingfield High but the Bruins probably won’t have as sweet a day as Thursday’s Senior Day cruise past Spring Creek, 9-0.

In just the third mercy-rule win this season, but first since early March, the Bruins had six assists on nine goals by four different players as they evened their overall record to 7-7 and finished fourth out of six teams in the 2-A Neuse 6 Conference at 5-5.

Beddingfield, which didn’t even have a girls soccer team in 2021, will be in the NCHSAA 2-A playoffs for the second year, based on the Bruins’ RPI ranking on MaxPreps.com .

A win in the state playoffs would assure Beddingfield of no worse than a .500 season, but just getting there was a major accomplishment after some early player attrition. That left the Bruins thin in places at times and forced some players to quickly learn new roles. Their development was evident in Thursday’s blowout win.

“Well, I was glad we got the 9-0 win because the last time we only beat them 2-1,” Beddingfield head coach Ed Hunter said of the Gators (1-15-2, 0-9-1 Neuse 6). “And I just feel like we always seem to struggle with their field; home-field advantage for them, too. But I know last time we played them we were having to learn some adjustments for my girls where we had had some girls leave the team and we had to figure out how to get our chemistry back together. So by now, we have figured out whatever chemistry we’re gonna have, how to make it work for us the best. Last night they did play well. They started off slow but when they found it, they stuck with it and it worked, of course.”

Senior forward K.J. Hill led the Bruins with four goals to go with two assists while junior midfielder Iris Martinez supplied two goals and three assists. The scoring output was a season high for Hill but it came as no surprise that she and Martinez led the way as the duo has accounted for 29 of Beddingfield’s 46 goals.

However, the Bruins also got two goals and an assist from freshman Sophia Rios and a goal by junior Isabel Baza. Diversifying the offense was something the Bruins have been working on all season, Hunter said.

“It was very nice and the thing about it is, teaching girls to trust each other is always tough because they get in their comfort zone and they don’t want to change,” he said. “So I’ve been saying, ‘Well, we’ve got to trust our teammates. Even if you don’t think it’s going to be favorable, you’ve still got to trust them because there’s going to be that one time that when it is favorable.’

“We had a couple of girls that got involved and had chances to score and just missed a shot. So really, even though the scoring came from four girls, there was two other girls that were given the potential to score. So they do see the benefit of us working that ball as a team and having other girls move up to the positions to maximize our chances because these teams are going to shut our main scorers down.”

While the Bruins still have more soccer to play this season, there’s a bright outlook for the future, even with the graduation of Hill and center back Gloria Mendoza. Junior Pinky Marshall, the Beddingfield basketball team’s star point guard, became a star at goalkeeper this spring as she played soccer for the first time since she was very young.’

“K.J. will be a loss and Gloria will be a huge loss in the backfield, so I’ve got two girls that are gonna be really hard to replace, but I’ve got Pinky, who was outstanding in goal,” Hunter said. “I can even argue that Pinky is basically come up to be one of our top conference goalies just because she makes so many stops. I mean, she’s good. She comes out and challenges the ball.”

Regardless of how the postseason goes for Beddingfield, success was measured by the respect earned on the field as the Bruins went from 1-12 in 2022 to 7-8-1 last season and now a .500 team this spring.

“I wish we’d had some of the girls stick it out,” Hunter said. “I think we had tons of potential and we were always complimented by the other teams. They’d say, ‘Your team’s really good. We were prepared on how to cover you.’

“So we have teams that respect our girls now as far as when we come there, they know that they’re going to have a good soccer match. So our girls, they’ve earned their credit; even our losses were close.”

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