The Hill – Carroll County High School has a Girls 👧 Soccer ⚽️ team and they are led by Ben Tickle. This group of young Ladies look to their Coach for guidance so it was a natural leap for me to call them the Battling Ben Tickles.

The team plays with a great deal of Heart ❤ and while many of them are experiencing Soccer ⚽️ for the first time they appear to be very, very coachable. The combination of Shana Parnell and Tickle create a one-two punch 👊 that brings energy and passion to their troops, with the results showing everytime they take the Pitch.

I do my best to add anything I can to their efforts because they are easy to root for. Ashlyn Newman is a next level player and along with fellow Senior Sarah Alderman provides leadership to a otherwise young group.

Tonight they /we were hosting the Knights of James River High School 🏫. We won a hard fought game earlier up in Buchanan and entered the night 🌙 looking to complete the season sweep.

Eight plus minutes into the game Newman broke free and found the back of the net at 31:45 to make the score 1-0. Less than two minutes later (29:56) Newman doubled down to make it 2-0 in favor of the Lady 👩 Cavaliers.

At 3:07 (1), James River was awarded a penalty kick and it would be the only time that a ball would get past Alexis Sheffey on the night. The teams headed into the break at 2-1 and 10 minutes later Newman went right back to work.

At 32:06 (2) Callie Harris set up for a corner kick and her great placement of the ball set up Newman for her third goal of the night 🌙. The correct label for one striker netting the ball three times in a single game is a Hat 👒 Trick and Newman has stuffed her closet full of these said Hats !

At this point something happened in the crowd, or maybe it only happened in my head. Up until the game became 3-1, it felt that the fans there to cheer on James River were cheering on their team.

Afterwards it switched to feeling that they went from cheering on the Knights to cheering against Miss Newman. This feeling is an old feeling for me after watching 👀 it happen to Alyssa Ervin for two years now.

Trying to break the perceived tension between the two fans bases, again possibly only in my head, when Newman found the net for a fourth time (10:39-2), again from the pass from Harris I made a conscious effort to credit the goal to Allison and then asked Harris to hold up her hand ✋.

Willing to take one for the team, I am comfortable with deflecting. Any questions about my thought process were clearly spot on when a few minutes later Newman worked her self free near the box.

The attempt for Goal #5 was blocked 🚫 by a James River defender and that taking place drew the loudest cheer of the night from the visiting crowd.

I will be the first person to admit that I am old and things don’t make as much sense to me as they used to but here’s my take on Ashlyn Newman and her efforts on our Pitch. They are winding down so we should just treasure every moment over the next few weeks and I will try to ignore the noise.

Players like Newman, who happened to break the All-Time scoring record of another Class Act in Adrienne Harris. Newman and her remaining contests at Tommy Thompson Field can be counted on one hand.

I wish we could find a way to pack the place for those remaining games because we are going to miss her when she’s gone !