Dreher girls soccer gets balanced effort to advance
The road to defending its Class 3A girls soccer championship became a little more difficult Monday for Dreher. The Blue Devils dominated Chapman in a 6-0 victory in the first round, but it might have come at a cost.
South Carolina Gatorade Player of the Year Kasey Parker returned to the lineup after missing six games, but only played about 10 minutes before re-aggravating a right foot injury.
“We had Kasey back for a little bit, and that helped,” Dreher coach David Kleinfelder said. “That was nice. Of course, she got dinged up again, so we don’t know.”
Parker’s return to the lineup paid early dividends as Dreher (18-2) scored twice in the opening eight minutes. Parker assisted on Sam Shaw’s goal in the second minute, and scored five minutes later to give the Blue Devils a quick 2-0 lead.
It was Parker’s 22nd goal and 10th assist in just 14 games.
But after the second goal, Parker came up limping and went to the sideline for several minutes. She returned, but lasted less than a minute before re-injuring her right foot. She was fighting for a free ball with a Chapman defender, landed awkwardly and immediately went down.
“We weren’t going to play her a whole lot,” Kleinfelder said. “She’s been working back slowly, so this was really her getting back out there with the whole unit. We knew if she got whacked – it’s a bad bruise – that if she was hit on it, that it would sting for a while. She got taken down pretty good.”
Kleinfelder says he doesn’t second guess the decision to insert Parker back into the lineup.
“I asked her,” he said. “I wanted to see if she wanted to run a little bit more to get her confidence up and she did. You can’t always win with the (decisions).”
Kleinfelder wasn’t sure of the severity of the injury, but any missed time could be crucial to Dreher’s success of making a deep run in the playoffs. If seeds hold true, the Blue Devils will likely be on the road the rest of the way after finishing second to Chapin in Region 4-3A.
Dreher will play the winner of Lancaster and Daniel in the second round on Wednesday.
“I thought we played the ball around nicely, which was good,” he said. “It was nice to get it in the net and spread the scoring around. We’ve got a lot of different ways we can score. If we can play like we did today and move the ball around, I think we’ll have a good chance, with or without Kasey.”
Shaw, a sophomore, was the offensive catalyst with a hat trick. She added two second-half goals to give her 19 for the season. The Blue Devils also received goals by Regan Dennis and Kendall DeBerry.
Shaw said playing six games without Parker has benefitted the team.
“I think playing so many games without Kasey has made everyone stronger individually,” Shaw said. “I think a lot of times we relied on her, but we’ve shown we can play pretty well without her, too. But we want her back, definitely.”
This story was originally published May 2, 2016 at 10:45 PM.