Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

GALLMAN — For the most part, Cathedral High School’s Maddie Verucchi is usually not involved in the scoring for the Lady Green Wave’s varsity soccer team as she plays the midfielder position.

But on Tuesday afternoon at Copiah Academy, something special happened. That day was Verucchi’s birthday and head coach Dennis Hogue made the decision to move her to the striker position so she could score a goal.

Verucchi not only scored one goal, she ended up with a hat trick as Cathedral wound up defeating the Lady Colonels 8-2.

“It was a good win and the girls played really well and played super smart,” Hogue said. “One of goals was a header, which was very impressive. A lot of girls are hesitant about doing that. Copiah Academy’s keeper was coming out, so instead of waiting for the ball to get to her feet, Verucchi hit it with her head.”

Hogue said he was impressed with how patient and disciplined the Lady Green Wave were with their passing, albeit against an inferior opponent.

“We practiced our through runs and our overlaps. We had through passs, which is split between two defenders and we had quite a few of those,” Hogue said. “Copiah Academy is not one of our stronger opponents. We worked on a lot of different things.”

Samantha Ashley and Izzy Dupre’ each scored two goals while Gracie Foster had a goal of her own as well as three assists. Dupre’ also had an assist.

“We had four different girls score and we have a good variety of scorers that can come at you from a variety of ways,” Hogue said. “Samantha Ashley’s my left-footer. She’s kind of passing the ball off. We’ve been telling her ‘you have a strong left foot’ and they’re not used to seeing a left-footer.”

Even though the Lady Colonels were able to put two shots into the net, Lady Green Wave goalkeeper Meredith Lessley had four saves.

Cathedral (3-1) will host Laurel Christian School at 5:30 p.m. Thursday with the varsity game first followed by the junior varsity game.