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Injury-riddled St. Clairsville blanked by Steubenville, 3-0

T-L Photo/KIM NORTH St. Clairsville’s Kaylee Shafer (6) defends against Steubenville’s Brynn Bowers (1) during Monday night’s girls’ soccer match on the artificial pitch at Red Devil Stadium in St. Clairsville. Big Red won, 3-0.

ST. CLAIRSVILLE — The injury bug has bitten St. Clairsville hard twice in the first 10 days of the girls’ high school soccer season, sending two of its top players to the sidelines.

Playing short-handed Monday night against a quality Steubenville squad, the Red Devils (1-1-1) were blanked by Big Red, 3-0, in an uncharacteristic performance on the artificial pitch at Red Devil Stadium.

St. Clairsville, which advanced to the Division IV, Region 15 championship game last fall, will be without its returning leading scorer in junior Ashlynn Lednik for the entire season with a torn ACL, while classmate Emma Gasber injured an ankle against Steubenville Catholic on Saturday is out indefinitely.

“It’s just a case of bad luck, I guess,” St. Clairsville head coach Wes Stoner said of the injuries. “It is what it is. Hopefully, Emma will be back sometime soon, maybe Thursday for Beaver Local, but I’m not quite sure yet.”

That makes the Red Devils an even younger team.

“We had 3-4 freshmen play tonight, so they got some good experience against a good team,” Stoner added. “Even with the experienced players that we had playing, I didn’t think we played very well. We’re just missing something. Everything was kind of off-brand for us. It wasn’t the way we normally play, but Steubenville is excellent all over.”

The victory keeps Steubenville (3-0) undefeated in the early going.

“We lost a lot of seniors from last year, but we have a similar core of girls back that were on the field a lot last year,” Steubenville head coach Annie Cutri said. “We still have a lot to work on. We put up a lot of shots tonight, but not many hit the back of the net. We’re going to move on from this game and get ready for our next one.”

A defensive steal resulted in Steubenville’s first goal of the match. Lucy Saccoccia swiped the ball from a Red Devil player deep in the right corner. The Big Red sophomore dribbled into the right side of the box before slipping the ball to Bailee Beall who one-timed it from the top of the box past St. Clairsville goalkeeper Kiya Kyer late in the fourth minute.

The score remained that way until Big Red struck again — this time when Gianna Thomas split a pair of St. Clairsville defenders in the box before sending a laser along the artificial surface and past Kyer to her right for a 2-0 advantage. Beall logged the assist.

Kenzy Petrelle made it 3-0 in the 72nd minute off an assist from Thomas.

As pleased as Cutri was with her offense, she was doubly pleased with the defensive effort her team put forth.

“Our defense played very solid. They (St. Clairsville) had a couple of breakaways, but we recovered and turned the shot away,” she noted.

Steubenville outshot St. Clairsville 16-1, with Kyer recording 13 saves to keep her team in the match.

Steubenville travels to Wheeling Central Wednesday while St. Clairsville heads to Lisbon to face Beaver Local on Thursday.

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