When the Lady Saints came marching in to face Cros-Lex on the Pioneers’ home pitch in the districts, both teams realized the importance of winning the match. It was quite simple; win or your season is over.

The Saints were playing their second game in as many days after knocking the Marysville Vikings out of their race toward the district finals, which was the first game of the districts for St. Clair. 

Playing back-to-back games in near-90-degree temperatures is usually enough to wear an ordinary team down. But the Saints are clearly anything but ordinary.

From the opening kickoff, the Saints showed that they had come to play, dominating the attack. In just the fourth minute of the game, junior Abigail Badke made a beautiful assist to senior Maria Galante, putting us on the board with our first goal.

With nine minutes in, senior Tayler Malone rifled a shot at the net. While the shot didn’t make it past the keeper, it proved to be too much to hold onto, causing her to drop it. When she did, senior Lauren Swantek was there to tap it in for an easy second score.

After 11 minutes of play, the Saints earned a free kick from a spot on the field only a step inside the corner kick arc, so it made sense to give that kick to our go-to corner kicker, sophomore Elia Tracy. And she reminded us of why she is our go-to, single-handedly curling the ball into the net, giving us a 3-0 advantage.

In the 14th minute of the game, Malone assisted Badke on the score that put us up by four. Only a minute later, Malone put a ball in for Badke, only to have it given right back to Malone to score and put us up by five.

It wasn’t until the 26th minute of the match that senior Emma Washburn assisted Malone on the score that put us up by six. With only three minutes left in the half, Badke assisted Tracy on another, ending the first half with the Saints up 7-0.

During the halftime talk, everyone realized that scoring just one more goal would result in a “mercy,” so we encouraged the team to get that done so we could make it an early night.

Despite the Saints overwhelmingly controlling the game in the second half, scoring that eighth goal proved to be the most difficult one of the match. It wasn’t until we had played nearly 24 minutes before Malone assisted Tracy on what would round out Tracy’s hat trick while also ending the game by a score of 8-0. 

So the Saints successfully ended one more team’s season while earning themselves a shot at the district title, which is set for a 6:00 kickoff against Clio, at Clio’s home field, on Friday.