2024 no more, Lady Bulldogs open 2025 with a shutout
Knoxville – The 2024 season ended on a bitter note for the Bearden High School girls soccer team.
The Lady Bulldogs came up just short of winning their fourth consecutive Class AAA state championship when they lost in a penalty kicks shootout to Germantown-Houston.
Bearden began last week what it hopes is a long journey back to the state tournament.
The Lady Bulldogs won their first three matches of the 2025 campaign, shutting out all of their first three opponents, including the defending Class AAA state champion Lady Mustangs.
The season began Wednesday, Aug. 20, when Bearden hosted Knoxville Catholic (which was coming off a season-opening victory against Oak Ridge) at Turner-Allender Field.
The Lady Bulldogs opened the new campaign with a 5-0 victory over the Lady Irish, who were short-handed due to injury.
KCHS (1-1), however, proved to be a formidable foe early as it kept the Bulldogs at bay before the Lady Bulldogs broke through with a goal when Madi Bowlin took a pass from Jayla Blue and promptly put into the back of the Catholic net in the 18th minute.
Blue, one of the area’s top scorers, had two assists in the match and the University of Tennessee commitment, struggled to find her shooting touch as she fired several shots wide of the net, hit the crossbar on one scoring opportunity and clanked another off the goalpost.
But, she was perseverant and resilient. She picked up a second assist when the Lady Bulldogs extended their advantage to 2-0, when Lauren Downey buried a shot in the back of the net in the 35th minute.
Blue, however, was frustrated, but it was Lady Bulldogs’ longtime head coach Ryan Radcliffe, who offered words of encouragement for Blue after the match.
“We know that Jayla is going to be marked and we know that she’s going to be double-and-triple teamed, and the biggest thing I told her was not to get frustrated,” Radcliffe said. “We missed a lot of shots but I think a lot of that was that it was our first game and they had already played a game, but we’re going to have to get it figured out pretty quickly.”
Brooklyn Major made the score 3-0 when she scored in the 49th minute.
In the end, five different Lady Bulldogs scored against Catholic, but the last two markers of the match came from Tyler Roth in the 61st minute and Blue in the 65th minute.
Roth, who was a top offensive weapon in 2023 for Bearden before missing the 2024 campaign with a knee injury, played her first high school game in two years and made an impact against the Lady Irish.
Friday, the Lady Bulldogs made a trip to Chattanooga and they knocked off Houston, 3-0, avenging the loss in the 2024 state championship match.
Blue, Roth and Cali Motley scored Bearden’s goals against the Lady Mustangs.
Saturday, the Lady Bulldogs notched a 2-0 victory over Hendersonville in Chattanooga as Roth and Blue found the back of the net against the Lady Commandos.
