AVON — The Avon girls may have been looking past Trinity last night, but a late goal in the first half ignited the Eagles’ offense in posting a 5-0 hard-fought win over the Trojans in non-conference play.

The win helps Avon keep its momentum going into the Eagles West Shore Conference showdown with Bay at home tomorrow night as both teams sit at 6-0 in WSC play. The Lady Eagles improve to 12-1-1, while Trinity drops to 5-8-2 on the year.

“We needed a tough physical game like this to get us ready for Bay,” Avon head coach Tony Dimacchia said. “We were getting pushed around and beat to every ball in the air in the first half.

“I did a lot of subbing to get some players in there who wanted to get physical. It was a couple of players that came off the bench to score the first goal that ignited us the rest of the game.”

Avon controlled the pace and the ball for most of the first half despite being knocked off the ball many times and getting beat to balls in the air at midfield to deny any offensive chances.

The Lady Eagles did have couple great chances in the first half as Megan Garner knocked a header just high four minutes in the game and Devon Saini banged a centering pass off the crossbar 12 minutes later.

Avon finally broke through on the scoreboard with 59 seconds half in the first half when Alexa Maggioli crossed the ball from the right wing to Emilie Wetzig who poked the ball past Trinity goalie Marissa Smego for a 1-0 lead.

“They (Trinity) came out and started knocking us around in the first half,” Dimacchia said. “At halftime, I asked the girls what we were doing out there and that we had to change the way we were playing.”

The girls took Dimacchia’s words to heart and started pushing back against the physical Trojan team. The play go chippy at times with teams exchanging shoves on a couple of occasions, but in the end, the Lady Eagles took control of the game.

Sydney Simpson played a Holly Ohradzansky corner-kick off her midsection and knocked home the second goal of the night with 27:59 left in the game for a 2-0 lead.

Avon took started icing the game just 1:20 later when Saini drove in a corner-kick to Ohradzansky who poked the ball past a scrambling Smego for a 3-0 lead with 26:39 left in the contest.

Nicole Chabot and Wetzig added a little icing on the cake for Avon as Chabot finished off a long run for a goal and Wetzig scored on a penalty kick after being taken down from behind in the box to finish off the scoring and start thinking about playing Bay for the conference title.

“Bay is going to come in and play harder and more physical than what we just saw,” Dimacchia added. “We can play soccer with just about anyone in the area. We have to be able to be very physical and be hard on the ball and be first to the ball.”

Avon 2, Lake Catholic 0

Before the girl’s contest last night, the Avon boys faced a stern Lake Catholic squad in non-conference play beating the Cougars, 2-0.

The Eagles squad got a penalty-kick goal from Ryan Galik and a one-on-one goal by Ryan Repas to help the Eagles improve to 10-3-1, while Lake Catholic drops to 10-4-1.

The win keeps the momentum going for the boys team as they travel to Bay tomorrow night to play the Rockets for the outright West Shore Conference championship while the girls host Bay at home at the same time for the girls’ crown.

“I told the kids we needed to have a good game regardless of the outcome,” said Avon head coach Chris Dore. “We needed to keep our confidence up that we can go out and beat some of the better teams in the Cleveland area.

“It’s going to be a lot of fun on Wednesday to have all four teams involved in the conference championship games come in at 24-0.”