Girls soccer: Cloverleaf loses, drops to second seed in MAC tournament

STREETSBORO — Playing most of the second half shorthanded Tuesday night, the Cloverleaf girls soccer team couldn't find any offense in a 1-0 loss to Streetsboro in the Metro Athletic Conference regular-season finale.With leading scorer Hannah Hopek given a red card after getting her second yellow with 28:51 left, the Colts (7-5-1, 5-1-1) only mustered one shot in the second half as they played more defensively.Streetsboro (9-4, 6-0) scored the only goal on a free kick from senior Zoie Dunn from 23 yards with 12:09 left. It was the seventh shot of the half for the Rockets and 12th overall."I think we all did really good just working together," Cloverleaf senior Kayla Shook said. "Everybody was communicating, everybody talked and we didn't put our heads down and allow them to score even more."Not being able to generate offense was difficult on Cloverleaf at times, however, as it wanted to be able to get up field and try to score."It was a little frustrating, especially as a normal offensive player playing a defensive mid position," Shook said. "My instinct wants to tell me to go up all the time, but when we have those opportunities, we need to take them. And I think tonight we had our chances, and we have to finish on those chances when we have them in these big games."Cloverleaf will now prepare for the upcoming MAC Tournament, which begins Thursday with a quarterfinal as the No. 2 seed at home against Springfield. "I think we're the main focus is to go game-by-game," Cloverleaf junior goalkeeper Stella Bennett said. "We just have to make sure each game we come into, we focus on the objective to get this win and move on to the next. That's the mindset."A win Tuesday would have given the Colts the MAC regular-season title and No. 1 tournament seed, but the overall objective if they lost was to keep the goal differential low to win the tiebreaker between them and Norton.To do so, Bennett made 12 saves, including several in difficult fashion in the second half that kept the game scoreless as long as possible and then to keep the margin at just one goal."We wanted to make sure to get the best seed that we could," Bennett said. "Our competition was Norton, and we were both competing for second place, so our goal today was least amount of goals against."The Colts feel like the loss will not roll into their tournament game against Springfield despite being without Hopek, who will serve a one-game suspension for the red card."I think everybody after the game, we all were, like, 'Good job," Shook said. "We're a great team when it comes to letting things go and just working together. I think that's really going to help us just come together and be a team."Contact Ryan Isley at sports@medina-gazette.com.Streetsboro 1, Cloverleaf 0CLOVERLEAF 0 0 — 0STREETSBORO 0 1 — 1SecondS — Zoie Dunn, 12:09.Shots on goal — Cloverleaf 4, Streetsboro 13. Corner kicks —Cloverleaf 3, Streetsboro 5. Saves —Morgan Novak (S) 0, Emma McDonough (S) 4, Stella Bennett (C) 12. Records —Cloverleaf (7-5-1, 5-1-1), Streetsboro (9-4, 7-0).