Habersham Central High School has a new region championship to celebrate as the Lady Raiders’ soccer team sealed the first such title in program history with a shutout rout of Shiloh High School Tuesday night.
The boys’ team also picked up a shut-out victory over the Generals, keeping its region championship hopes alive ahead of a big matchup with Gainesville on the road at City Park Friday night.
Girls: Habersham Central 10, Shiloh 0
“I’ve told the girls they deserve it,” Lady Raiders Head Coach Jeff LaBarbera said. “They’ve worked so hard. We should have won it the Covid year, we were in first place. The girls have been on the brink for so long. They deserve it. They’ve put in the work for it and they’ve been rewarded tonight.
“After tonight’s game I just told them, ‘Look, nobody can ever take away the history we made. We’ll always be the first region champs in program history and nobody can ever take that away from us.’ It’s special,” he continued.
Achieving the first region title in program history wasn’t the only piece of history collected on the night.
Junior Paisley Cathey, a Georgia Southern verbal commit, scored her 27th, 28th, 29th, 30th and 31st goals of the season.
That 27th goal coincidentally came in the 27th minute of play, tying the previous school record for goals scored in a single season for the girls’ program. The record-breaking goal came in the 30th minute.
HCHS (11-2-1, 10-1 Region 8-AAAAAA) scored early and often. Despite dealing with a lengthy lightning delay a short time into the first half, the Lady Raiders kept up the attack throughout the night and didn’t let up until the job was completed.
Junior Abigail Hotard started the scoring for the night, following up a shot from Cathey inside the 10th minute. The Shiloh (2-11, 2-8) goalkeeper knocked the shot away, but it fell in the path of Hotard who had zero issue putting the ball in the net.
Although the Lady Raiders were able to get the opening goal early, it would take another 25 minutes of game time before the next would find the net.
In the 24th minute of play, Cathey found sophomore Meg LaBarbera, who smashed a shot through the keeper’s legs from 20 yards out.
Cathey’s first goal of the night made it 3-0 in the 27th minute. Then, 90 seconds later, senior Addi Banks found Hotard for her second goal of the night, which she slotted into the bottom left corner.
Just 39 seconds after that, junior Ansley Means crossed the ball to fellow junior Annabelle Clark for a header and a 5-0 lead.
Another 40 seconds passed before Cathey made it 6-0 and broke the scoring record in the 30th minute.
In the 35th minute, LaBarbera took another shot from long range and found the back of the net again to secure her brace.
Cathey capped the scoring in the first half, locking up a hat trick, with a 30-yard goal to put the Lady Raiders on top 8-0 at the halftime break.
With the big deficit, the second half clock was shortened from 40 minutes of play to 20 and the game wouldn’t see the end of that mark.
Seven minutes in, Cathey took a free kick from around 35 yards out and slotted it home. Then, with just 1:28 left on the clock, the junior hit another shot from 30 yards in the run of play. That ball hit off the bottom of the crossbar in the top left corner of the goal, completing the 10-0 victory.
Of Cathey’s five-goal, record-breaking game, LaBarbera said, “thirty-one goals in a season, she’s just going to keep scoring in the next two games, so she’s going to shatter that record for sure. She’s sitting on 31, the school record for the boys is 39 and the girls was 27. That’s pretty cool.”
Now, with those two games left in the regular season – a final region game against North Forsyth on April 9 and a non-region matchup against East Hall – she’s chasing the most goals in a career for the boys or girls program.
“The overall boys and girls record is 72 (goals in a career),” LaBarbera said. “Preston Franklin, Nolan Hemmer and Jamie Haynes are in a three-way tie with 72 goals. She’s about to break that. She’s at 69. It’s crazy.”
Despite the cause for celebration in winning the region, there was no time given for it due to Teacher Appreciation Night festivities taking place between the boys and girls games.
The victory was the sixth straight for the Lady Raiders since losing in a penalty shootout against Jackson County on the road. The girls got revenge for that loss last Friday at home against the Lady Panthers. That’s where the celebration for the region really took place for HCHS.
“It was a little anticlimactic (tonight),” LaBarbera said. “The celebration and jubilation last Friday when we beat Jackson, that was the magic moment when we felt like (the region title) was ours. I told them after that game we had one hand on the cup. We took care of business tonight and we put both hands on the cup.”
The goal now is to win a playoff game, which the program has done only once in its history. Getting such a win, according to LaBarbera, “would be amazing” and “anything after that would be gravy on the top.”
Currently, HCHS is ranked 15 out of the 56 Class 6A schools in Georgia by MaxPreps.
Between now and the end of the regular season, much less the playoffs, the Lady Raiders are getting a once-in-a-lifetime experience over their spring break.
Thursday, the team and a group of parents will board a plane for a 10-day trip to Italy. They’ll get to experience playing girls teams from the country as well as touring different training facilities and getting training from professional coaches.
“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime trip to go overseas where soccer is a religion, especially in Italy,” LaBarbera said. “To play against girls teams in Italy, which haven’t been around very long. They’ve actually put some attention to the girls’ side. It’s going to be special. We’re just making memories that are going to last these girls a lifetime.
“Making this trip is just capping off this season beautifully,” he continued. “We still have work to do when we get back, but just to experience that together is going to be amazing.”
Boys: Habersham Central 6, Shiloh 0
The rain and bad weather cleared out for the start of the boys game and it took all of eight minutes for the Raiders (11-2, 9-1 Region 8-AAAAAA) to put their first goal on the board.
Senior Xavier Lopez gained possession of the ball and carried it into the center of the 18-yard box, drawing the Shiloh (4-9-1, 2-9) goalkeeper toward him. A quick pass to the right side of the box found fellow senior Luis Aguilar waiting for a tap-in effort.
Sophomore Camden Meads showed up on the scoresheet yet again, slotting the ball to the left side of the keeper in the 22nd minute.
Senior Owen Wallace slid one through the keeper’s legs for the third goal of the night in the 28th minute and secured a brace just before halftime to give his squad a 4-0 lead at the break.
The second half wasn’t a scoring free-for-all, but the Raiders continued to push forward.
In the fifth minute of the second half, Lopez was credited with a goal as a group of Raiders attacked a ball played into the left side of the 18-yard box.
The final goal was notched with 7:58 remaining in the contest as sophomore Payton Adams carried the ball down the right side before crossing the ball into the box, finding junior Angel Vallejo. Vallejo controlled the ball in a tangle of legs from a pair of Shiloh defenders. He was able to slip past them and slot the ball into the left side of the goal.
“This is one where, they have some good players – I don’t know where they were tonight, but they gave us a little more of a competitive game down there,” HCHS Head Coach Ric Wallace said. “The first half was good. The second half, they made it a little bit more of a joke and that’s not what you need to head into an important one against Gainesville Friday.”
The Raiders were really able to take advantage of what they’re good at, which is set up from the back and build through the midfield.
“The first goal tonight is straight off what we’ve been working on at practice and watching film and seeing opportunities we create and just looking for what’s on when we get the right movement,” Wallace said.
HCHS controlled the pace of play and commanded the game from the outset, prompting the Generals to sit nine of their 10 outfield players behind the ball in a very defensive shape.
“Against a team like tonight, they’re not going to come out a lot and, at times, they had nine guys behind the ball. It just makes it tough to find those spaces, but we stuck six balls in the back of the net,” Wallace said. “That’s an important piece. We’ll take it.”
The fight for the region championship is still in full swing after the shutout win for the Raiders. The next hurdle to that is taking on Gainesville on the road. Wallace said his team will have to refocus in practice Wednesday to get ready for the Red Elephants, who played HCHS to a tight 2-1 game. The Raiders had to score twice in the final 10 minutes to earn the win.
“It’s Gainesville. You’ve got to go to City Park. You’ve got a chance to where, if you go into City Park and get the result, you come back off spring break and you host North Forsyth here for the region championship,” Wallace said. “You’ve got a senior group of guys that have been together for a long time and they’ve been working and they say (a region championship) is what they want. It’s about, at that point, showing the maturity to get back out here, put this one behind us and let’s get ready for the next one.”
The Raiders are keeping opponents to very few scoring opportunities and have only given up eight goals this season. They’ve collected eight shutout wins thus far.
“Again, tonight we get a shutout and we haven’t really allowed many opportunities at goal,” Wallace said. “It’s really just the whole team from front to back working hard and understanding our shape and things we have to do when we lose it. “They’re committed to doing that. Our back line has been really solid when (opponents) do get to those (goal scoring) opportunities. They’re making them shoot from distance and are able to block a lot of stuff. We’ve been solid the whole time.”
Being able to dictate the game and, effectively, what their opponents are able to do is something that has been highly effective and will have to continue for the Raiders to have a shot at the region championship against North Forsyth, who won the first matchup 1-0 in Cumming.
“That’s what we’ve been able to do against everybody all year,” Wallace said. “North Forsyth is an offensive juggernaut and that was a game that was played in the midfield when we played them. Everybody else, we’ve been able to kind of dictate the play.
“We’ve got to be able to do that Friday night at City Park,” he continued. “It’ll be a bigger field than we’ve been on, it’s grass, and we need to dictate the game being played and limit their opportunities with their stud guys.”
The Raiders and Red Elephants will kick off at 6:30 p.m. Friday.
