On Thursday, Sept. 20, the Catasauqua girls’ soccer team hosted Salisbury in a crucial midseason encounter.

The Rough Riders were hoping to continue their recent run of good results. They beat Notre Dame (3-0) last week and most recently tied Moravian Academy (3-3). This was an important game to see what the Roughs would need to in later games to secure a playoff spot. While Salisbury was coming into this game confident with their impressive winning record this season at 6-1-1.

It was a wet and rainy Thursday afternoon, but the weather didn’t stop Salisbury from starting the game on the front foot.

The Falcons scored two quick goals within the first 15 minutes of the game. The first goal was scored by Erica Holben, after some nice passing and a tidy finish. Then Salisbury’s Rylee Donaldson doubled the Falcon lead after a quick breakaway.

The Rough Riders were struggling throughout this game, but they came out in the second half inspired to get back into this contest. They put the pressure on the Falcons and cut the lead in half to 2-1. The Roughies Amy Huber put some hope into the team to at least walk away from this game by notching the goal. That was until the Falcons’ Rylee Donaldson responded and scored her second of the game to cement the win for Salisbury.

After the game head coach Chris Hain felt the contest could’ve went better for his team.

“We played all right today,” Hain said. “We gave up a lot of chances, but we hung around till the end. We almost came back but couldn’t finish the game.”

This result moved Catasauqua to 3-4-2 on the year, as we are now over halfway through the season.

Catasauqua will look to turn things around in their upcoming games after this loss. Their next match is at home against Palisades (7-2-1) on Sept. 26.

Hain believes his team can turn things but need to improve on a few things.

“We have some tough games ahead, but I think if we just work on our defense and finishing, we can play much better,” he said.

THE BOYS scored two first half goals and hung on to beat the Falcons last weekend.

Westley Brown and Damian DiPaolo scored the goals while Devon Troxell picked up two assists.

Gabriel Atiyeh had 14 saves to get the win.