Story and photo by Mark Carpenter – 

The girls’ soccer regular season came to a close last week with a battle at West Union High School between a pair of county rivals as the Lady Dragons hosted the North Adams Lady Devils.  Both teams were coming off big wins, West Union 8-0 over Portsmouth West and North Adams 8-2 over Washington Courthouse.
The North Adams- West Union contest was played on a beautiful Friday afternoon, Oct. 13, the perfect day for an outdoor sport to be played and as expected, it was the favored Lady Devils who controlled the action, getting  hat tricks from senior Lakyn Hupp and freshman Karissa Buttelwerth and rolling to a 7-0 victory.
Hupp, who continues to just add to her school scoring record, got the ball rolling for North Adams less than four minutes in when she took a pass from Braylie Jones and one-touched the shot over West Union keeper Caitlyn Cooper to make it 1-0.  Just three minutes later it was Buttelwerth’s turn as a Jones throw-in went to Brooklyn Wylie who centered it to Buttelwerth for the shot that found the back of the net.
No one scored for the next 28 minutes as the West Union defense and the play in the net of Cooper was strong, but with 5:23 left in the first half, Hupp took a pass from Buttelwerth and put a move on a West Union defender and sent the ball past the onrushing Cooper to give the Lady Devils a 3-0 halftime advantage.
In the second half, the Lady Devils added four more goals to their final count, the first coming from Buttelwerth unassisted at the 34:10 mark.  Again, the Lady Dragons’ defense pulled up their bootstraps and played tough, holding the high-powered North Adams offense scoreless over the span of the next 20 minutes.  That string was broken when Hupp scored off a Wylie assist at the 14:20 mark, then five minutes laterWylie assisted again on a Buttelwerth score.  Wylie then decided to get in on the scoring action herself, getting an unassisted goal with just eight seconds left in the game.
The 7-0 clean sheet was North Adams keeper Madee Shipley’s fourth shutout of the season, adding to her career record which now stands at 30.
“The West Union girls are improving and that is good to see,” said North Adams head coach Dave D’Avignon.  “Brooklyn Wylie had a nice game, three assists and a goal, and mary Sonner preserved the shutout with a double non-goalie save on the same play.  “I had never seen that before.”
“Our team is playing well.  I’d say we’re ready for the tournament.
The two teams met again on Tuesday, Oct. 17 at North Adams in a Division III sectional final battle.  That result was not available at press time, look for a report in the upcoming weekend edition of The People’s Defender.