On a busy Friday night of sports where four teams hosted games across Sealy ISD, the Lady Tiger soccer team kicked things off with a 5-0 win over Hempstead to open play within District 20-4A.

Sealy had a quick turnaround and beat Rice 4-0 Monday and will once again host the first of four Friday home games to end this week of play against Harmony School of Discovery.

Last Friday, three different Lady Tiger goal scorers found the back of the net in the second half to complement sophomore goalkeeper Camarie Santos’ shutout to earn the first district win in the first district contest.

“It’s amazingly big because it sets the tone going forward,” Head Coach Sydney Jones said. “One of the big changes this year is taking those Tuesday games to Monday which means we come out of this game without a practice so coming out of this game with a win gives us a huge mentality boost and maybe gives them some confidence because we struggled through preseason and we knew we were going to and that was kind of that point there was to work hard and (get kinks out early).”

Although neither team scored in the first half of the district opener, Sealy had the advantage in scoring opportunities and time of possession. Coming out of intermission, sophomore Rebeca Garza executed the halftime message and opened the scoring less than two minutes into the second half.

“‘We need to pass the ball a little bit better,’ not that we weren’t really trying it just wasn’t quite there and on top of that, ‘I think we can hold them we can keep them from scoring, I know we can do that, but what we need to do is score. We need to put points on the board because we don’t want to end this with a zerozero, this isn’t a tie kind of game,’” Jones said of the halftime messages. “It was kind of as simple as that and let them have some conversations and we said the people in the back are watching a totally different game than the forwards are watching so when they’re talking to you listen and make sure you’re being a little more vocal. They took that opportunity to say this is what we see and everybody shook their heads and said let’s do it.”

Freshman Dominique Castillo made the Lady Tigers’ advantage two goals before senior Hattie Schalla scored a pair of goals 12 minutes apart. Garza then provided the bookending score with only 3:25 remaining to push the lead to its final resting place.

“I’m pretty happy scoring five and I think they’re happy and realized, ‘OK we can do this if we settle down and make smarter choices,’” Jones said. “Some of them getting multiple goals is a good thing because that does build that confidence but also having several separate scorers is good for the team because it says we don’t have just one person that can do this, we’ve got several people that can do this.”

Although Santos was not tested heavily in net, she made the stops she needed to and secured the victory through the cold.

“Sometimes it’s harder when you’re standing there for a while without much action then something comes up so you’ve always got to be ready,” Jones said. “The good thing about Camarie that she’s always brought, even in basketball, is she’s always ready and competitive. … She is key and she has really proven herself in practice and in games, she stops some shots that – if you just watch her track, her eyes are always going, her feet are always moving. Even if they’re at the thirty yard-line, she’s envisioning what could happen and a lot of that probably stems from her playing basketball.”