Photo by Nick Henthorn St. Clairsville’s Emma Gasber moves through the Linsly defense Tuesday during the Red Devils’ 6-1 first-round OVAC 4A tournament win over Linsly. Gasber scored four goals in helping St. Clairsville advance to face Cambridge in the OVAC semifinals.

ST. CLAIRSVILLE — St. Clairsville and Linsly drew each other for a first-round OVAC girls soccer matchup Tuesday — a rematch of the two teams’ regular-season game just last week.

While the Cadets won their previous encounter, it was the Red Devils who prevailed, 6-1, on the tournament stage inside Red Devil Stadium as third-seeded St. Clairsville began their bid to return to the OVAC championship game.

“Girls stepped up today,” St. Clairsville head coach Wes Stoner said. “We have three starters out now. We got another one that was just injured against East Liverpool a few days ago. So starting center back Eva [Munson] was out. We had girls step up and we played well. We played with effort, urgency, and I think they wanted this one after losing the last one to them when they came in here and beat us 3-2 not even maybe a week ago.”

St. Clairsville was also without juniors Kendall Sall and Ashlynn Lednik on Tuesday.

After Linsly’s Makena Aiello lofted up a long-range shot that found the back of the net in the 19th minute of Tuesday’s game, St. Clairsville scored six unanswered the rest of the way, starting with Emma Gasber pounding through the first of her four goals in the 23rd minute to tie the contest.

“I thought we started out really well, we came out strong,” Linsly head coach Morgan Kost said. “I think we lost energy through the first half and St. Clairsville is good enough to capitalize on just one lapse in focus.”

After Linsly defeated St. Clairsville in the regular season, the Red Devils thought that they were better prepared for the Cadets in their tournament fight.

“Poppy [Yendell], we knew her speed now, obviously, which we didn’t know going into that last game,” Stoner said. “I think she had a couple breakaways on us last week, so we kind of had it prepared for that a little bit and talked through how we’re going to prevent that. I felt like it worked a little bit, we were able to keep her to only a couple shots, maybe, and we just possessed the ball, which was what we didn’t do last time.

“To be frank, it was more about us than about them, and how we wanted to play against them. We wanted to play how we play, which is possession, moving the ball around and just always staying available for each other. And we worked the ball pretty well and got some good chances and got some goals.”

St. Clairsville scored twice more in the first half, both quick-hitters where St. Clairsville flipped field quickly and struck fast. Isabella Cunningham found Elizabeth Morgan for a center-cut shot in the 35th minute.

Gasber found herself on a breakaway just two minutes later, and wound up a shot with great velocity, enough to blast through the outstretched hands of Linsly keeper Elaina Pusz, who had three saves Tuesday.

Her counterpart, St. Clairsville’s Kiya Kyer, made an impressive save with 10 seconds left in the half, venturing a few steps out from goal and taking a shot straight to the stomach for one of her 10 saves.

“We had a lapse at the very beginning,” Stoner said. “Credit to the girls, they didn’t get down going down one-nothing kind of early in the game, they stuck with it and played our game and passed well and finished finally.”

Elizabeth Morgan scored on a free kick from the right wing in the 47th minute to go ahead 4-1, and Gasber completed a hat trick in the 51st minute, playing a back-and-forth two-man-game with Morgan all the way down the field and to the goal.

Gasber made it four goals in the 65th minute, gathering a pass behind the entire Linsly defense, getting around the advancing keeper and tapping through an uncontested shot for the eventual final 6-1 mark.

With the win, St. Clairsville will face No. 2 Cambridge tomorrow on the road. St. Clairsville defeated Cambridge 3-1 earlier in this season, but as Tuesday demonstrated, regular season outcomes are not guaranteed to repeat in the tournament.

“It should be a good game,” Stoner said. “They’ve got some talented girls, so we’ll see how it ends up. But they’re the two seed, they’re ranked higher than us, so we’re headed there and hopefully we can beat them and get to the final.”

St. Clairsville made it to the 4A OVAC finals last season, falling to Weir.

“Hopefully we can get back there this year,” Stoner said.