OXFORD – Lafayette’s soccer team was discouraged.
The Commodores had started the season 3-6, and the players were – to put it bluntly – panicking.
“They were like, ‘Coach, we suck. We need to change our system. We need to do something different,’” head coach Melinda Scruggs said.
Making drastic changes was not the answer to their struggles, Scruggs told them. She reminded her players that their tough early schedule – which included the likes of Hernando, Oxford and Tupelo – would ultimately make them into a better team. She was right, of course.
By season’s end, the Commodores were hoisting the Class 5A state championship trophy. It’s the program’s fifth title under Scruggs, who is the 2024-25 Daily Journal Girls Soccer Coach of the Year.
Her resolve to stay the course after a rough start was soon embraced by her players. Lafayette went on to win 14 of its next 15 games and edged Florence on penalty kicks in the state title match.
“It was really neat, now here at the end of the season, to say, ‘OK, let’s reflect.’ And they were like, ‘Coach, it was worth it,’” Scruggs said.
The championship game provided a microcosm of what made Lafayette successful this past season. The Commodores got two goals from Rivers Rikard in the second half for a 2-1 lead, and it was tied 2-2 going into overtime. With its offense struggling, Lafayette leaned hard on its defense and goalkeeper Andrea Rhea to get the game to penalty kicks.
The Dores won the PK segment 3-2, with Rhea making a kick save to clinch the title.
Penalty kicks were something Lafayette worked on constantly once region play began. Rhea got so good at stopping shots in practice, in fact, that her teammates again became discouraged.
“Now all of a sudden my girls have no confidence, because she’s literally saving everything,” Scruggs said. “But the last two five-minute periods (against Florence) I was like, we’ve just got to get to PKs. Because I knew, because of how good she was at PKs – at least in practice – I was like, we have a big chance at being able to win.”
Lafayette was not nearly as prolific a scoring team as the previous season, with 34 fewer goals. But the play of Rhea, as well as the back line of Abbie Britt, Brystal Davis, Lizah Holland and Caroline Thacker, was a constant for the Commodores. It also helped that they stuck with the process.
“To see their joy after winning is probably what makes it all worth it,” Scruggs said. “They knew that they put in the work, they invested a lot of time and effort. They became a family, and just to have that, that’s what’s so exciting.”
