By Joseph Krum
Staff Writer
@joseph_krum

The ball came flying in, ricocheting off of the cross-bar and into the huddle of players near the goal. Luckily for the Cowgirls, freshman forward Mackenzie McFarland saw it first and took the best shot at it.

The ball propelled into the back of the net and gave the Cowgirls the 1-0 lead, an important goal in a 2-1 Coppell win over McKinney Boyd in the Class 6A Region 1 quarterfinals.

The other scorer for the Cowgirls was senior forward Sarah King, who had her 28th goal of the season according to dallasnews.com.

As for how they won, soccer coach Chad Stricker credits the defense for holding on to a two-goal halftime lead.

“They have a great defense, but tonight and throughout the season we’ve had a great defense as well,” Stricker said. “We changed their game and kept them on their heels. I’m glad we took care of business in the first half, but I also thought we played strong in the end. The defense did great tonight. Sarah Houchin is our lockdown player back there, and virtually each player on the defensive side does a great job.”

Part of the defense that kept the Lady Broncos to one goal on a penalty kick was senior goalie Rachel Johnson. Johnson, who allowed her first playoff goal tonight, did all she could to help her team.

“Because of the defense playing as well as they did, I wasn’t used in making saves,” Johnson said. “I just stayed strong in the back and cheered my team on when needed to help them hold onto the win.”

The Cowgirls will play Arlington Martin (15-5-2) in the 6A Region 1 quarterfinals at Scharbauer Sports Complex in Midland on Friday. McFarland knows what Coppell needs to accomplish to advance deep into the playoffs.

“We need to remember the adrenaline and atmosphere,” McFarland said. “We need to play a little bit faster and work a little bit harder to keep the pace up in the game.”

Along with pace, Stricker thinks that there were other things the Cowgirls need to improve on getting deeper into the playoffs.

“We came out and we were playing great, but we weren’t finishing,” Stricker said. “Our timing was off, and I felt like we were in control of the game but we weren’t taking the lead. Our two goals that we got felt good, but if we had finished on other opportunities we could’ve been up 4-0 at half. I was happy that we hung on, but we need to know that we have to take care of good chances. When we play the better teams later on and let them hang around since you don’t capitalize on opportunities, you’re living dangerously.”