KARNS CITY, Pa. (EYT/D9) — It’s a new tradition this season for a girls soccer program that has a rich and storied one.
(Above, freshman Hanna Dailey, who had a hat trick in a win over Redbank Valley, holds the signed soccer ball given to the Woman of the Match for Karns City. She shared it with Aubrey Price.)
At the end of every Karns City soccer game, a ball is handed out to the “Woman of the Match.” The “wha-tom” ball as it’s pronounced, goes to the player who performed the best in the eyes of the coaches for a full 80 minutes.
On a blustery, rainy Thursday afternoon, that ball went to two Gremlins after a 7-1 win over Redbank Valley.
Hanna Dailey scored three goals and Aubrey Price also found the back of the net in the first half while playing well for the entire match to lead Karns City to the victory.
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Each WotM signs the ball after they receive it.
“The ball came from our tournament in the summer with these girls that we won and we just decided that we were going to pick a WotM each game,” said Karns City coach Tracy Dailey. “It’s just kind of a way of recognizing good play all the way through 80 minutes of soccer.”
Hanna, just a freshman, earned her name on the ball with a pair of second half goals that put the game out of reach.
On her second of the final 40 minutes — and third of the game — she made an acrobatic play on the ball, punching it into the net as she fell, sprawled out, on the turf.
Hanna has given the Gremlins another dangerous weapon in a deep arsenal of them that includes seniors McKenna Martin and Emma Dailey.
“I think it’s very exciting, especially with this group of girls,” Hanna said. “I was excited to come in and do some things with them, and I couldn’t have gotten any of those goals without the whole team helping me.”
Karns City (7-3) led 4-1 at the half on the strength of goals from Martin, Emma Dailey, Price and Hanna Dailey.
Hanna scored twice to make it 6-1 and then Sarah Dodd capped the scoring with her goal late in the half.
“Aubrey and Hanna both played tremendous tonight,” Tracy Dailey said. “They were on the ball a ton in the midfield. They were working off each other and that lets us create so many opportunities.”
Lia Hageter scored for Redbank Valley on a penalty kick in the first half.
Redbank Valley coach Michael Dawson was pleased with how his team played in a difficult test against Karns City.
“Compared to our last game to this game, it was like night and day when it came to effort,” Dawson said. “If we can kind of bottle that for the rest of the year, I think we’ll be alright.
“We wanted to try to limit their shots as much as we could and I thought we did that,” Dawson added. “A lot of their makes were nice shots and it’s hard to stop those on any day to begin with. You can’t really stop (Emma) Dailey or Martin. You can only try to slow them down as much as you can. They’re kind of inevitable. They are pretty talented players.”
Redbank (3-4) has some talented players, too, and even in the loss, there were bright spots.
“We’re still preaching we need to play a full 80 minutes because we’ve had a couple of lapses here and there,” Dawson said. “We still haven’t done it, but I thought today was kind of the closest we’ve come to that. There are things we can fine tune here and there.”
Redbank Valley, Keystone, and Union/A-C Valley sports coverage on Explore and D9Sports.com is brought to you by Heeter Lumber.
