Lessons learned from Southside’s soccer loss to Lejeune

Published 2:47 am Sunday, April 13, 2025

By Jason O. Boyd

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CHOCOWINITY, N.C. — The Southside High School girls’ soccer program has made great strides overall and in play in the Coastal Plains Conference.

However, it’s still a tough road to hoe against soccer stalwarts like Lejeune.

The Devil Pups showed why they are one of the top Class 1A teams in the state with a 6-0 victory over the Seahawks on Wednesday. 

Lejeune (11-0-1, 3-0 CPC) has been a soccer power for a number of years, joining the likes of other Onslow County schools such as White Oak, Southwest Onslow, Richlands and Jacksonville. Although the Devil Pups have never won a title, they’ve gotten close.

Throw in East Carteret, another solid girls soccer program and it makes the CPC one of the tougher Class 1A leagues in the region. Although Southside (9-4-1, 1-2) has made great strides in its soccer program, there’s still a lot to work on to reach the level of those teams.

And Southside coach Jay Petty knows that. Still, he liked a lot of what he saw his team do despite the struggles against a far stronger team.

“They’re little number two (Scarlett McLean), she’s averaging like three and a half goals a game. She’s an outstanding player,” Petty said of McLean, who had three goals for the Devil Pups.

“We did everything we could to try to shut her down tonight. And we didn’t do too bad. Just overall, we started a little flat and a little slow. And that’s what I told the girls at halftime. And they came out, I felt like we did a whole lot better job in the second half.”

In addition to McLean’s hat trick, Olivia Shuler had two goals and Jacie Canaienne netted the last one. The Devil Pups got three goals in the first 27 minutes and never looked back.

On defense, Lejeune has only given up seven goals on the season and one in CPC play. Southside was consistently pressured — sometimes a little too rough — by Lejeune’s defense. The Seahawks spent a good part of both halves defending their own goal from the attack Lejeune’s offense delivered. The Seahawks did get the ball back on the other side to prompt several offensive attacks but nothing serious materialized.

“Yeah, they played a good bit of defense,” Petty said. “And I’ll give it to the coach (Charles Teegarden) Their coach knows the game well, he coaches them really well.

“So, I don’t want to take anything away from Lejeune. We could have played better, it’s just one of those nights. And then, of course, when you got other factors that come into play that kind of work against you, you just kind of got to take the lumps and move on.”

Petty is hoping games against Lejeune and East Carteret will make his team better. After hosting both teams, playing at their places later in the season will be tough. However, Southside does sit in good position to get the No. 2 seed in Class 1A from the CPC for the state playoffs.

“Yes, what we’ve been working on quite a bit, and I told the girls we just got to get better at our passing,” Petty said. “And last week against East Carteret was probably the best passing we’ve ever done against them. Normally against East Carteret, we can’t even win the ball.

“That’s probably one of the big things that eats us up against teams like this. They pass really, really well. And I’m trying to get us to that next level of being able to pass that well.

“We’ve got to learn to get to that same level of game speed. So if we can work on anything at practice, it’s gonna probably be passing a little bit, definitely challenging the ball in the air.”

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