The Long County High School soccer teams on Tuesday split games against Toombs County in Lyons.
The Lady Tide won, 9-2, but the Blue Tide fell, 2-1.
In girls’ game, Long County took a big 6-0 lead into halftime and appeared to be heading for another shutout. In the second half, Toombs County fought back with two goals of its own, but the Lady Tide also put up three more scores to seal the win.
“I was really proud of the girls for coming out and running it right at Toombs,” Lady Tide coach Brian Todd said. “We only beat them 3-1 in our first meeting, but we didn’t give them a chance to get it started tonight.”
It was windy Tuesday, making it hard for the teams to set up their shots, but Todd said his team handled the adverse conditions really well.
“The wind was horrible to kick in, but Nakia (Hunter) and Kelsey (Higgason) did a great job of dribbling through defenders to counteract the weather conditions,” he said.
Kelsey and Megan Higgason each had three goals. Alyssa Anderson added two, and Kaylyn McEwin had one goal.
Todd also praised his team’s defensive play, highlighting the efforts of two players.
“Taylor Poole played an exceptional game for us on defense, and freshman Emily Proffitt is starting to grow into her new position on defense. She’s getting better each game,” he said.
With the win, the Lady Tide improved their overall record to 6-2 and their Region 2-AA mark to 4-2.  They also are No. 22 in the state AA rankings by Maxpreps.com.
For the Blue Tide, their close-game losses continued to haunt them as they fell to the Redskins by one goal. Alberto Nevarez scored Long County’s lone goal.  
With the loss, Long County fell to 3-5 overall and 1-5 in the region. All of the Blue Tide’s losses have gone down to the wire, having lost four games by one goal and another game in overtime.
Blue Tide coach Paul Austin said that his team played well on defense, but struggled with the elements on offense.
“Toombs is a very good team … not our best performance, we didn’t play as a team,” he said. “Defense played good, just had a hard game working against 30-mph winds. We still have a lot of work to put in to get back on track.”
The Tide teams were scheduled to host Vidalia on Thursday. Results were not available at press time.