VERO BEACH – Sarah Keville, Lauriell Young, and Kathleen Keenan each scored twice in Vero Beach’s 6-0 shutout win over Ocoee Thursday night at the Citrus Bowl.
VBHS coach Jose Luis Gibert was excited about the way his team played against a strong Ocoee team. “It’s an unbelievable feeling,” Gibert said. “Ocoee is a good team – their #20 had five goals in the last two games, but she didn’t even have a shot until the end and that was off a rebound.”
Keville scored the game’s first goal at 5:11 in the first period from about 12 yards out. The score remained 1-0 until 26:35, when Young took a beautiful pass from the left side and put a header past the Ocoee goalkeeper.
Keenan scored the next two goals, the second being another highlight-reel header, to put VBHS up 4-0 with about 12 minutes to play.
Young scored her second goal at 11:45 and Keville made the score 6-0 when she found the back of the net with 7:36 left to play.
The VBHS defense kept Ocoee at bay, helping goalkeeper Destiny Kelley earn a shutout. Gibert pointed to his team’s transition play as their key to the game.
“I think they get tired of practicing it, but when you repeat something over and over again it leads to excellence,” said Gibert. “I think they finally believe that their coach isn’t crazy, because they were finally doing great things out there in terms of transition play. That is where the game is won or lost.”
Vero (17-3-2) plays undefeated Apopka (19-0-2) in the regional semi-final on Tuesday.