KINGSPORT – To paraphrase the classic Rick Pitino rant during his doomed tenure coaching the Boston Celtics, Mia McLain is not walking through that door for the Dobyns-Bennett girls soccer team. Neither is London Taylor. Nor is Ava Flanary.
Dobyns-Bennett vs Daniel Boone Photo Gallery
McLain and Taylor were seniors for the 2023 Tribe squad that reached the state tournament. Flanary, the striker, was supposed to come back but has been sidelined for the season. Finding replacements for them, and others, are priorities for the Lady Indians – and Tuesday’s 4-0 result against Daniel Boone at Indian Highland Park looked like a step in the right direction.
D-B (2-1-0, 1-0-0) scored its four goals on 10 shots and limited Boone (1-2-0, 0-1-0) to just a single shot, which was off target, as the Tribe notched their first clean sheet of the 2024 campaign in the Big East Conference opener for both teams.
Moving Gigi Bulcao to center back played a major factor in the success of the defense. In the Lady Indians’ most recent match, a 5-0 loss at home to Tennessee High, Bulcao started the game at forward wing then moved to the back line at halftime. More time in practice followed, with a shift to center back – the position McLain played so admirably last season en route to TSWA all-state honors.
Carlee Cradic, who scored two goals against Boone, thinks Bulcao is a fine fit on the back line.
“Gigi’s quick,” Cradic said. “She's gritty. If somebody gets by her she's working really hard to get back. She hustles.”
D-B coach Tony Weaver has paired Bulcao with senior Taylor Johnson at the two interior spots in the back four.
“We were looking for some speed in the back. And Gigi has played there before with her club,” Weaver said. “We decided to give her a shot and she performed extremely well back there.”
“I've played all those positions before,” Bulcao added. “We felt like we needed more experienced players at the back.”
Bulcao noted that responding in a positive way from the Tennessee High loss was necessary:
“We had to win. It was not optional to come out here and lose, especially at home.”
Getting off to a fast start certainly did not hurt. D-B opened scoring in the fifth minute, when Boone committed a foul inside the box to set up a penalty kick. Tribe sophom*ore Courtney Quisenberry converted the PK.
D-B staked a 2-0 lead by halftime after Kora Houlihan scored from distance in the 36th minute on a high arcing shot. She later assisted Cradic on her second goal, in the 59th minute.
Houlihan is a key returnee in the midfield, where Taylor also played a prominent role last season. Houlihan provided some of the elements that came from Taylor: scoring, and also the willingness to get physical with opposing players.
“We moved a couple of people around [since Thursday] and I felt that really helped our game,” Houlihan said, adding, “I feel I'm pretty secure in the middle. Having Carlee there today absolutely made a big difference.”
Cradic definitely made a difference in the second half. She scored off an Ashley Frederick in the 50th minute, then got the feed from Houlihan in the 59th. The D-B assists leader in 2023, Cradic said she feels a greater urgency to take shots and be offensively minded.
“I'm still trying to get assists to my teammates but I feel like now that Ava’s gone, I need to play more of a scoring position,” she said.
Cradic also gave her take on how D-B was able to improve and bounce back: “We realized we had to actually connect as a team and communicate with each other. That just bumped us up a level.
“My teammates connected on really good passes and Kora was able to get it to me and I thought that we played really well together, too. I was just able to finish it. Against Tennessee High, we were so disconnected.”
As for communication, Weaver noted that his team – if you can forgive a bit of circular logic – talked about the importance of talking.
“That definitely improved,” he said. “We've still got to get better at it but it's improving.”
The girls soccer season is a sprint, not a marathon. By the end of September, the District 1-AAA tournament will be under way. Weaver likes to tinker with his lineup and play lots of people early in the season, whether he is leading the girls in the fall or the boys in the spring, but crunch time will arrive in no time. This weekend's three-game trip to Gatlinburg for the Smoky Mountain Cup represents an excellent opportunity for the Lady Indians to test things and fine tune.
Boone coach Ashley Delavega Haren also talked about communication, or the lack of it, from her side.
“D-B did a great job of capitalizing on opportunities,” she said. “We gave up some opportunities where we should have worked together, communicated a little bit more on the field.”
It was also a setback following Boone’s 2-1 win at Morristown West last Thursday.
“It was a great win. It was a team win. We had to play really hard that game,” Delavega Haren recalled. “Our girls, we tell them each and every day, it depends on who wants it more.”
Boone returns to the pitch Monday, when it hosts Volunteer.
