After winning the District 11-A-AA tournament championship last year, the Marshall County Tigers soccer team began defense of their title on Thursday night by beating the sixth seeded Middle Tennessee Christian School Cougars 3-1 at home in the first round.

Having defeated MTCS 2-0 in their lone regular season encounter, the third seeded Tigers raced out to a 2-0 lead midway through the first half of Thursday's contest before the Cougars tallied a goal late in the opening stanza to slice the deficit to 2-1 at the break.

Foe can't go

Marshall County then tightened up their defense in the second half and held MTCS scoreless the rest of the way while tacking on a late insurance goal to claim their third straight win over the Cougars.

Thanks to Thursday's win, the Tigers advance to the semifinals of the tournament where they will take on second seeded Summit on Tuesday night at Page High School.

Aided by their strong second half performance, Marshall County outshot MTCS 36-21 overall and held a 7-2 advantage in corner kicks.

"I thought we were the better conditioned team and wore them down in the second half," said MCHS coach Lisa Raffo. "At halftime, we talked about what we didn't do right and what we could do in the second half that was constructive . I think we did a really good job creating space, which led to more scoring attempts."

Tiger scorers

David Martinez, Luis Consuelo, and Edwin Jaimes each scored one goal for the Tigers with Martinez dishing out one assist. Ivan Leyva recorded an assist for Marshall County as well, while Jose Pineda attempted a team high 10 shots.

Senior goaltender Evan Haislip started the game in net and registered nine saves in the first half. Consuelo then replaced Haislip in goal at the start of the second half and also tallied nine saves.

Carson Calahan scored the Cougars lone goal of the game, while Bryce Richardson was credited with an assist. MTCS goaltender Gavin Burgess finished with 19 saves.

The Tigers grabbed a 1-0 lead in the 15th minute when Martinez made a long throw in from the right side of the field before Consuelo blasted a close range shot past Burgess while the ball was still in midair.

Jaimes then gave Marshall County a 2-0 advantage in the 25th minute by redirecting a corner kick from Leyva into the back of the net.

The Cougars narrowed the gap to 2-1 in the 34th minute when Calahan took a pass from Richardson in the middle of the field and lined a shot into the right hand corner of the net from the top of the goalie box.

Breathing room

Although Burgess made several nice saves in the second half to keep MTCS within striking distance, the Tigers finally opened up some breathing room by notching a goal in the 67th minute to push their lead to 3-1. After Burgess deflected a long range shot by Pineda, Martinez ran down the ball and fired an acrobatic shot just underneath the top post of the net from the middle of the field.

In the 70th minute, the Cougars had chance to cut into the deficit when they were awarded a direct kick just outside the goalie box, but Consuelo leapt up and batted away a high arching shot by Calahan to maintain Marshall County's two-goal lead.

Marshall County then burned the remaining time off the clock to earn a spot in the tournament semifinals.