By KEVIN ECKLEBERRY

Daily News

It was more of the same.

The LaGrange High girls’ soccer team has been flawless in region play since the 2017 season, and that trend continued with Tuesday’s 4-0 victory over Central-Carroll at Callaway Stadium.

LaGrange (6-5 overall) improved to 3-0 in Region 5-AAAA while moving a step closer to a third consecutive region region championship.

LaGrange, which has won 15 consecutive region games over the past three years, visits Cedartown today before returning home for Thursday’s showdown with Cartersville, which is 5-0 in the region.

LaGrange completes its region schedule with a home game against Sandy Creek on April 12.

In Tuesday’s game, Caroline Thompson had two goals, and Hana Sato and Kylie Russell had one goal apiece

Thompson, Izzy Pippin and Sydney Ormsby each had one assist.

Colin Ross, who coaches the team along with Andy Fritchley, was happy to see what the players have been working on in practice pay off with a strong performance against Central.

“We’ve taken some big steps to reevaluate, and look at what we needed to do,” Ross said. “We realized that the last few years, we’ve tried to do all this tactical stuff, and we’ve failed technically. We have been focused solely on the technical aspect, and we saw it today. We moved the ball so well across the back line. We pushed forward defensively, and then that allowed us to get the ball into our key attacking players higher up the field, which is so much different than where it’s been before where we’ve been picking up the ball and having to go all this way.”

The Lady Grangers took the lead on Sato’s goal with 28:23 left in the first half, and less than two minutes later, Thompson converted a penalty kick to make it a 2-0 game.

The Lady Grangers continued to pepper the goal keeper with shot attempts, but they didn’t score again in the opening half.

Three minutes into the second half, LaGrange notched its third goal, with Thompson banging the ball into the right side of the net.

LaGrange capped the scoring on Russell’s goal with 12:48 to play.

Central-Carroll came into the game with a respectable 2-2 region record, and it hung tough in losses to Sandy Creek and Cartersville. Central-Carroll was unable to keep pace with an inspired LaGrange team, though.

“We have so much competition this year (in the region),” Ross said. “Central is a better team than we were last year. I don’t think the score reflected that, we just had a very good game.”

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