MINDEN - It was a pair of players pressed into double-duty that made the difference for their respective teams in the final minutes Tuesday night between the Carson and Douglas girls' soccer teams.
Douglas' Holly Downer and Carson's Kenzie Tillitt each came up with a standout play to keep their team from losing the game as the two squads settled for a 1-1 tie.
Carson held a 1-0 lead with just over seven minutes in the game thanks to an earlier goal from Arran Rumbaugh, when Douglas' CJ Baumgartner played a nice corner in front of the net.
Tillit, the Senator's leading goal-scorer on the year who started in net Tuesday night, made a move to punch the ball away. However, Downer, who played most of the game on defense for the Tigers, crashed the net and made a nice leaping header past Tillit to tie the game at one.
"Holly is just on fire," Douglas coach Lorraine Fitzhugh said. "She has a couple different roles she has to play. She turns on the forward switch and the defensive switch when she has to.
"She got up in the air and got a huge goal for us toward the end. She was amped up."
Tillit got some redemption with a little under two minutes left, though, when Douglas' Katie Dry sent a nice arcing shot toward the far upper corner. Tillit leapt back to her left and made a fingertip save on the ball, preserving the tie.
"She made a nice save on the play," Carson coach Randy Roser said. "It was kind of a game time decision to put her in there. She's one of our top scorers but she's done a good job in net, has a lot of confidence in there.
"Douglas just came over the top and made a good play on it while she was trying to punch it out on their goal."
Both teams work better with a widespread attack, and both coaches noted the narrow width of Keith "Duke" Roman Field as contributing to the a lack of flow during the game.
"Any time you come down on this little tiny field, it's tough to keep the ball in play most of the time," Roser said. "We couldn't get in any kind of rhythm during the first 20 minutes because the surface is so narrow."
It's an obstacle Fitzhugh said her team is gradually learning to play with.
"The narrow field is always a challenge," she said. "We are doing better every time we play on it.
"Composure is hard to come by when the other team is pressuring the space you are trying to field the ball into. Overall, I was very happy with our touches and how we were able to string the ball together. We had a game plan and did what we planned to do out there.
"Carson is a very good team. If anything, I would've liked to see us get off a few more shots."
Carson's first goal came in the 58th minute when Natalie Stevens threw the ball in and it deflected off a Douglas defender and to Rumbaugh's feet.
Rumbaugh made a nice run with it and sent a shot high that bounced off the lower half of the crossbar and into the back of the net.
"We have a lot of movement on our attack, we run some patterns and we got a nice throw in from Natalie Stevens that set our goal up," Roser said.
Carson moved to 5-0-1 in league play and 6-0-2 overall. Douglas' record is now 4-1-1 in league and 11-1-1 overall.
"It's a wake up call for our girls, but we're still undefeated," Roser said. "We're almost back to 100 percent in terms of health. We have one more game in the first half of league play and then we have to regroup for the next round."