By Jeremy McDonald
Jeremymcdonald73@gmail.com
SALEM, Ore.– The South Salem Girls Flag Football team had to clutch up Thursday night in their 14-7 Varsity victory over Sprague at South Salem High School.
Following their two victories Wednesday night to open the season that saw the Saxons win pretty decisively, the grind to close out the contest was a nice change of pace to close out the first week of the season.
“We’re always under a lot of pressure as a defense to keep it up, but I think if we work well together when we communicate and hype each other up, it all fits into place,” said South Salem’s Jillian Davis.
The Saxons jumped out to a 14-0 lead on Sprague with two passing touchdowns by way of Leah Ioane. The first touchdown strike came in the closing seconds of the first quarter, and the second came following an interception to start the second quarter. Sprague built some momentum going into the halftime break as Addison Hannant scored with 14 seconds left in the opening half and the Olympians getting an interception on the next play, nearly returning it for a score before South Salem stopped Sprague before crossing the goal line as the halftime buzzer rang.
“I don’t know, I think something just clicked when we got that first touchdown. We just said, ‘ok, we’re on the board’. Last season, I don’t think we got on the board with South, so this was a huge thing. So our mentality was, ‘go out there and do it’,” said Sprague’s Kirra Cloyd.
The second half was a stalemate. Neither defense broke, though they did bend a little as both squads threatened to score. South got a fourth down stop to start the second half, Sprague responded with a defensive stop, the Saxons got an interception, and the Olys once again got a stop going into the fourth quarter.
“Sprague definitely gotten better…it’s so nice to be able to know that we can close out games, that we can get out of our own heads,” said the Saxons Diana Burnell.
And though Sprague had two cracks at tying it, South didn’t break. Standing strong as their rivals in the Olympians did in turn to close out the 14-7 victory as both squads closed out the first week of games.
“I think it was completely mental. We all get competitive, we all start talking to each other, so it was like we all need to stay in our own zones and I think we did a good job with that and just kept playing our own game,” said Cloyd.
Photos By Jeremy McDonald
