AIKEN — Aiken High girls' soccer coach Victor Tice is the first to admit he's no math teacher, and he's not going to anxiously crunch the numbers this week to try to figure out his team's playoff destiny.
He knows how deceiving region records can be, especially in a league like the massive, loaded Region 4-AAAA. Going strictly by the numbers, the Hornets' 6-6 region record would leave them as a No. 4 seed - and that doesn't do justice to how dangerous this Aiken team can be. Tice also knew how big this week would be, starting with Monday's road trip to Midland Valley and another roadie Thursday at Brookland-Cayce, in terms of where the Hornets would wrap up the new region grind.
"Something we were very intentional with this year was with our scheduling," Tice said following Friday's 4-3 loss to South Aiken. "I didn't schedule a whole lot of other games for that reason, just because I knew how much of a grind it was going to be. Maybe that hurt us a little bit. Maybe it will hurt us in the RPI. And it's just a testament to the region and the size of the region. Iron sharpens iron, and all of that. I think, come playoff time, you're going to see a lot of teams from this region make a deep run."
The Hornets (7-8 overall) already logged wins over Midland Valley and Brookland-Cayce in the first trip through region play, and completing both sweeps would lock up a fourth-place finish. North Augusta entered the week a half-game back at 6-7 and with a trip to South Aiken on Monday to finish the regular season for the Jackets.
Friday's loss to South Aiken meant Aiken was swept by its arch rival, but the Hornets didn't go down without a fight. A slow-starting game gave way to a frenzied second half, during which the teams combined to score five goals. Aiken twice battled back from two goals down to get within one before South Aiken was ultimately able to run out the clock and keep its hopes of a second-place finish alive.
"I was really proud of them. I was telling Dave (Mihoulides) and Ed (Owens) that that was the slowest, most low-key start to a game. ... That's how it goes. I was super proud of how they fought," Tice said. "There's a lot of teams in our region that are a lot better than the record shows. I think this is probably the toughest region in 4A just because of how close everybody is. It doesn't take not stepping up to a ball one time or just a ball to bounce a certain way, but I was very proud of how our girls - we talked a lot this week about trusting each other and building on that as a team. I thought we really did that well tonight. I was super, super proud of that."
Junior Resa Slack scored twice, bringing her season total to a team-high 14 goals to go along with six assists. Freshman Norah Drumming scored her ninth goal, which leaves her behind only Slack and fellow freshman Taylor Campbell (12). Katie Slack had her team-best seventh assist of the season, Olivia Blaszczak dished out her sixth and Lilly Young recorded her second.
There were missed opportunities, but Tice saw his players pick one another up in some tough spots. That's reason to believe they can do it again this week to reverse a run of three losses in their last four games, and he knows that if they can come together for a collective effort then he doesn't need to worry about what the scoreboard looks like.
"We possess the ball very well. I think we've got a pretty high soccer IQ. I think we're a good unit, a good team," he said. "They're working for each other. That's just something that is going to serve us well - it served us well tonight. I think that we defend really well and as a unit, again. We've been really, really organized this year. I'm very proud of how our girls have worked together and really bought into what we're trying to do. And that leads to attacking well, also leads to defending well."