Kramer nets four goals as Knights beat Lancers

PREP SOCCER

Royal Oak Shrine’s Julia Kramer, right, celebrates one of her goals with Isobel Malcolm in Saturday’s 6-0 victory over Oakland Christian. TIMOTHY ARRICK PHOTOS — FOR MEDIANEWS GROUP

Oakland Christian’s Alli Brock, left, battles Royal Oak Shrine’s Clara Fisher for the ball during a 6-0 Lancers’ loss Saturday. With the victory, Shrine improved its record to 6-1-1 this season.

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By Michael J Wallwork

For MediaNews Group

ROYAL OAK >> The host Royal Oak Shrine Knights got four goals from Julia Kramer and rolled to a 6-0 win over the Oakland Christian Lancers Saturday evening.

Kramer got the Knights on the board early, converting a breakaway from a through ball just 4:15 into the game. Barely a minute later, she took a pass 40 yards from goal, turned and outpaced the defense to turn it into another breakaway, which she also slotted in to double the early lead.

The Knights would go on to dominate the game, stringing together passes and maintaining possession for the majority of its remainder.

“This is the first time all year, really, other than maybe a scrimmage at Grand Valley, where we’ve possessed and passed really well. It makes a difference when we can pass and possess and attack at the same time,” Shrine head coach Mark Soma said. “The nice thing is, we got everybody to play. We got the whole team in, and even when the subs were in we did a good job of passing and possessing.”

Kramer completed her hat trick midway through the first half, and Shrine went into the break up 3-0. Any thought of a comeback from Oakland Christian was quickly dashed in the second half as Shrine added two more goals in the first five minutes — one by Molly Salerno and another from Kramer for her fourth — to extend the lead to 5-0.

Oakland Christian did play better as the game went on. After Kramer’s early breakaways, some defensive adjustments cut those chances out and the team defended well in front of net. Led by the play of captains Taylor Ahn, Jessica Reyes and Rowan Klein, the Lancers kept fighting, but they remained unable to solve the Knights’ defense on any of their attacking forays to dent the scoreboard and find a way back in the game.

“We had to adjust, and it’s hard,” Lancers head coach Patrick Reyes said. “I wish I had more time to sit and figure out what we could do tactically to change things a little bit. That’s what halftime was for. I was hoping after halftime we would have had just a little more motivation to try to stop them. But at the end of the day, credit to my girls, they played the full 80 (minutes). They weren’t going to give up, and I think that’s one of the things about any of my teams that I’m going to be proud of is that they won’t give up.”

With the win, Royal Oak Shrine improves to 6-1-1 overall. The Knights host Orchard Lake St. Mary’s on Monday in a Catholic High School League contest.

“We’ve figured out how to win. Now we have to figure out how to play as a team,” Soma said. “If we can play like we did tonight against teams our size, we’ll obviously do pretty well.”

Oakland Christian (1-2) is still trying to assimilate the new players.

“I brought back quite a few (players), but then I also have a lot of new (ones) as well,” Coach Reyes said.