Cindy Brown

Newly appointed TSSAA referees tried their hand at judging the field at last weekend’s games at Drakes Creek Park. Among the local teams competing, Hendersonville’s own girl’s soccer team took the field Friday night when they split and faced one another in their own version of a Black and Gold game.

It was a tight match. Knowing the other’s strengths and weaknesses, the girls not only had a difficult time scoring against one another, defending their own goals proved to be a challenge as well. After the match, Head Coach Russ Plummer commented on the game itself, saying that the match-up proved to be a challenge for each team. “It’s (a little) hard when they play against each other because they are friends now,” Plummer said.

Plummer also continued to comment on his girls’ overall hard work this summer. “We’ve done things over the summer, and last week, we went to team camp.  

So we’re just trying to put into place the things we worked on over and this game showed a lot of progress.”

However, it wouldn’t be until Saturday night’s contest against the Dobyns Bennett Lady Indians that the Commandos would be allowed to convey just how much they’ve improved over the summer. “Hopefully, it’ll be a little bit more of a test,” said Plumber, “The group has been doing pretty well; they’ve been working hard, so we’ll see how it goes.”

Saturday night proved that the Hendersonville Commandos would be a team to watch-out for this soccer season.

When Dobyns Bennett took the field, they weren’t quite expecting how Hendersonville was going to perform. When their rival team scored early on in the game, the Lady Commando knew they would have increase the intensity of their play.  Although the match was not an easy win for Hendersonville, the Commandos proved themselves on the field, coming back from a 0-2 deficit by downing Dobyns Bennett by four.

When asked how his girls performed after the game, Coach Plummer simply replied, “I was pleased.” He furthered by saying, “Obviously in the first period, we were challenged a bit, but I was pleased with the way we never gave up, I was pleased with the way we continued to fight and do what we needed to do.”

The Black and Gold look as if they will have a very promising season; however, with such a positive start before the season actually begins, Plummer was reluctant to say anything that would jinx his girls. “Time will tell,” said the coach. “It’s a long year and we don’t want to be our best at preseason; we want to be our best continually.”

Later, he said that games like these only helped the Lady Commandos by giving them practice and experience. “All this is to help us get better,” he admitted. “We have (about) a week and half before our next scrimmage,” and with games like the one against Dobyns Bennett, the Commandos appear to be the team to beat this soccer season.