JACKSON — A strong defensive showing and a 1-0 halftime lead seemed like a good omen for the Lamar girls soccer team.

Hartfield Academy, though, seemed to step up its game a notch in the second half as it scored four unanswered goals to secure a 4-1 win in the MAIS Division II state championship game. A strong late-season surge came to a frustrating conclusion, with the Lady Raiders beating St. Aloysius and Starkville Academy this past Tuesday and Thursday to earn a berth in Saturday’s title game at Jackson Academy.

The Lady Raiders finished 11-7 on the year with an unblemished 6-0 district record in head coach Nina Galindo’s first year leading the team.

“No one believed in us, and I’m not saying that I didn’t believe in us, but the first week was a very hard week,” said Galindo, referring to her first week of practice with the team back in the summer. “The second week was even harder. In the third week, I was pulling my hair out and didn’t want to come back. I don’t know what happened. It was literally team meeting after team meeting every single day, and thought this team was going to hate each other all the time, but whatever happened, we turned it around, and this team is like the closest team I’ve ever been a part of, even when I was playing soccer. We pulled it together and proved a lot of people wrong, including ourselves.”

Sophomore defender/sweeper Anna Claire Hutchinson, who was named All-Division II along with teammates Emma Kate Uithoven and Anniston Monsour, said she remembers those rough few weeks and credits the team’s juniors for stepping up and demanding better.

“Every practice we would talk, and they would ask us what we wanted,” Hutchinson said. “Did we want a future of winning or not?”

Lamar started the season 2-5 but bounced back to go 6-0 against Division II East competition. Once the playoffs began, the Lady Raiders were peaking at the right time, and it looked like the momentum was carrying over to the title game at first.

The game remained scoreless until the 37th minute when a goal by Uithoven gave her team a 1-0 lead, which Lamar would maintain going into the half. Hartfield was moving the ball up the field regularly, but up until that point, the Lamar defense didn’t break.

Unfortunately for the Lady Raiders, Hartfield kept that offensive pressure going in the second half, scoring goals in the 46th and 54th minutes to go up 2-1. The Lady Hawks put the game out of reach with back-to-back goals in the 73rd and 74th minutes to make it 4-1.

“Hartfield is a solid team with tremendous talent up top,” Galindo said. “I knew it was going to be a hard game to play, but my defenders held out and did what they could. Good teams are going to put goals away, and they’re an amazing team, so they did put goals away.”

Keeper Bayleigh Brent finished with nine saves for Lamar.

The Lady Raiders have no seniors on their team, and with everyone expected to return in 2020, Galindo said she has high hopes for next year’s team, especially with an influx of middle school players who will be eligible to play on the team next year.

Hutchinson said Galindo has already let the players know that they’ll be preparing for 2020 almost immediately.

“We’ve never practiced in the offseason, but Coach said we’re going to come out with a bang,” Hutchinson said. “We’ll add some more to the team, and I think the relationships we developed will only get stronger.”