By Mike Blackerby editor@oakridgesports.com Oak Ridge’s Trenna Howell showed a penchant for three-goal games in 2006. It looks like Howell, the Lady Wildcats’ all-state soccer player, is ready to up the ante her senior season. Howell scored all four Oak Ridge goals Thursday night as the Lady Wildcats edged defending Class AA state champion Christian Academy of Knoxville 4-3 in a game-type scrimmage at the steamy ORHS soccer complex. “Trenna is an all-state striker. If she gets the opportunity, she’s gonna finish,” said Lady Wildcats coach O.J. Sheppard. “Overall, I’m real pleased with the way we controlled the ball. It was a good scrimmage -- I thought we were fitter.” Sheppard’s Lady Wildcats looked like they might run away with the 80-minute scrimmage early on. Howell’s first goal came at the 3:55 mark of the first half courtesy of a perfectly-timed assist from Jamie Grigsby, who took some of the pace off her pass. Howell took Grigsby’s feed and then shot the ball between the legs of the CAK goalie for the score. Howell scored again just four minutes later with a dead-on shot in the middle of the CAK goal. But CAK, which finished 22-0-2 last season, rallied to tie things up 2-2 at the half. The visitors went ahead at the midway mark of the second half before Oak Ridge fought back. Howell tied the count at 3-all at the 70:48 mark. Less than three minutes later, she snuck the soccerball past the CAK goalie’s right hand in the corner of the net for the game winner. While one of Sheppard’s goals this season is to find complementary scoring for Howell, he said that will come with time. “It’s OK for Howell to score like that. In the first half we executed with our attacking midfielders. In the second half they got lazy and didn’t push up the field. When Howell scores like that, it’s going to open up opportunity after opportunity for our other players.” Sheppard lauded the efforts of several players -- including many of Oak Ridge’s new faces. “Our younger players responded well. Maddie Bishop played well in the back and Hailey Nichols and Kaelyn Angelo played well.” Sheppard also applauded the play of sophomore keeper Jessica Shewmaker who entered the fray after CAK evened the count at 2-2. “Shewmaker did a good job. She played with a lot of confidence -- I thought she grew up a lot tonight.” Oak Ridge’s final preseason scrimmage is set for 6 p.m. Tuesday night at Maryville. The Lady Wildcats kick off regular season play on Aug. 21 at Clinton (6 p.m.). |
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