OBSERVER Photo by Lisa Monacelli Chautauqua Lake’s Emily Phelps possesses the ball during Wednesday’s varsity girls soccer match against Allegany-Limestone in Mayville.

MAYVILLE — The Chautauqua Lake Lady Thunderbirds soccer team dropped a non-league match on Wednesday to Class B2 Allegany-Limestone by a score of 8-0.

“We knew going in that they were going to be a strong team,” said Chautauqua Lake head coach Danielle Jacobson. “They won states last year. We played a pretty hard game on Monday, so I think the girls are pretty exhausted.”

The Lady Thunderbirds made a quick push early grabbing a corner kick off of the opening possession, but a quick Allegany-Limestone counter resulted in an opening goal scored by Kaitlyn Higby just three minutes in.

Chautauqua Lake again countered after the opening goal, as senior Emily Phelps streaked down the left side only to narrowly miss the net.

“Our biggest thing is that we weren’t physical enough,” said Jacobson. “We would get to the ball then we would back away.”

The Lady Thunderbird’s heavy legs would start to effect their game early as substitutions were made very early by Coach Jacobson.

One standout for Chautauqua Lake was goalkeeper Hailey Roush, who made a sprawling save, one of her 11 saves on the day, to keep the game 1-0.

After that save, Allegany-Limestone’s Alyssa Spring and Abbey Gardiner would score back to back to push the lead to 3-0 just a quarter of the way through the first half.

“Like I said we just had to be more physical,” said Jacobson. “We got pretty beat up on Monday, we were missing two girls tonight because of it. Some other girls were playing through injuries.”

It seemed like the Lady Thunderbirds would finally break through during the 30th minute when Lauren Alfa got loose on a breakaway, but her shot was stopped nicely by the Gators’ goaltender Kelsey Riordan.

From there, Allegany-Limestone tacked on two more goals to take a 5-0 lead into halftime.

Chautauqua Lake just couldn’t find enough juice in its legs to keep up with the firepower on the Gators’ offense as forwards Kyleigh Perdue and Phelps weren’t able to find any openings in the defense all afternoon.

“We tried too many setups too many different ways,” said Jacobson. “It just wasn’t working for us.”

Allegany-Limestone tacked on three second half goals to make the final score 8-0.

“Going forward we just need to hustle and get to the ball more,” said Jacobson.

Chautauqua Lake (1-3) returns to the pitch on Monday when the team travels to Fredonia to take on the Hillbillies at 4:30 p.m.