Chattanooga Christian is moving on, headed to the Class A/AA girls' soccer state tournament for the sixth straight year.
The Lady Chargers dispatched sectional rival Arts & Sciences 6-0 Saturday afternoon, and six players scored goals as coach Cal Sneller emptied his bench. Each of the 23 CCS players got at least 10 minutes of playing time.
Notre Dame also is headed to Murfreesboro following its 1-0 A/AA victory at Boyd-Buchanan, and the Fighting Irish and the Lady Chargers will be joined by McMinn County, which advanced with a 2-1 Class AAA sectional win over Siegel. CCS and Notre Dame have been there and have brought back championships, but this will be McMinn's first state-tournament trip.
In Division II-AA quarterfinals, Baylor and GPS both fell 1-0 in Memphis, Baylor to defending state champion Briarcrest and the Bruisers to Hutchison. GPS outshot Hutchison 17-8, but the hosts scored in the last eight minutes on a direct kick.
CSAS coach David Poss had nothing but praise for Chattanooga Christian.
"CCS is an extremely strong team," he said. "They control the ball, and what they do so well is moving into space and moving without the ball, so they create numerous opportunities. I felt like our defense played about as well as it could."
His Lady Patriots actually challenged CCS.
"They possessed much better than I thought they would, and they came up with numbers (on the attack)," Sneller said. "They weren't going to pack it in. They wanted to play, and that's good."
It was the teams' third game in five days, something of a grueling pre-Murfreesboro schedule.
"It gets hard," Sneller agreed. "But you know ahead of time that it's going to be that way. We host a tournament where each team plays three games in two days, and we went to another that was similar. You don't see the prettiest soccer, but they play hard and they play through it."
The teams won't play their first match in Murfreesboro until Wednesday, and their second match is Thursday. Friday is an off day with the championship matches set for Saturday.
CCS obviously knows the routine well and was the state runner-up a year ago, but the Lady Chargers went through a grinder to get to the final, first beating Christ Presbyterian and then Christian Academy of Knoxville, each of which was considered a pre-tournament favorite. Eventual winner Greeneville won 6-2, then 4-0.
Contact Ward Gossett at wgossett@timesfreepress.com.