Box Score by Benny Benton
MISENHEIMER, N.C. – Sisters Emily and Della Futral had a hand in all three goals for Barton College on Wednesday as the Lady Bulldogs battled to a 3-3 double-overtime tie on the road at Pfeiffer University.
The tie left Barton with a record of 2-1-1 overall and 1-0-1 in Conference Carolinas, while the Falcons moved to 1-3-1 overall and 0-0-1 in league play.
The Futrals helped BC match the performance of Pfeifer senior Aaliyah Jackson, who produced a hat trick by scoring all three Falcon goals.
Jackson's third strike – her sixth in five career meetings with the Lady Bulldogs – came with roughly 12:30 gone in the second half, giving the Falcons a 3-2 lead.
However, with just two and a half minutes left in regulation, Della Futral took a free kick from about 30 yards out on the left wing after a Barton player was fouled. The sophomore drove the ball past Pfeiffer reserve keeper Kate Halligan and into the lower right-hand corner of the net to knot the score at 3-all. Both teams took two shots in the two 10-minute overtime periods, none of them on-goal.
Barton jumped out to an early 2-0 lead in the contest with the help of Emily Futral. In the 13th minute, the senior from Richlands, N.C., gathered a ball near the top of Barton's box and dribbled down the middle of the field all the way into Pfeiffer territory before passing the ball off on the right wing to fellow senior Ashley Batchelor, who fired a shot past Pfeiffer's starting keeper, Deidre Gilley, for the game's first goal.
Ten minutes later, the elder Futral stole a ball on the far right wing, spun to create an opening between a pair of Pfeiffer defenders and drilled the ball just inside the left post to increase BC's lead to 2-0. Futral has scored three goals and added two assists in her last two visits to Misenheimer.
Pfeiffer needed a span of just three minutes to tie the match, however. In the 29th minute, Pfeiffer's Katlyn Stevens beat a Barton defender to a cleared ball on the right wing, drove to the right endline and sent a crossing pass into the box, where Jackson was waiting to finish off the play.
On a nearly identical play in the 32nd minute, Brae Buster fired the cross from the right endline towards the far left post, where Jackson was again waiting to push the ball into the net past Barton keeper Kelsey Rothwell.
The two sides went to halftime tied at 2-all, but Pfeiffer took the lead in the 58th minute. A turnover on a Barton throw into the Pfeiffer half led to a quick break for the Falcons. Andrea Garcia received a pass just inside the Barton half and quickly played a thru ball up the middle to Jackson, who raced past the last Barton defender for a one-on-one with Rothwell.
The Pfeiffer lead withstood five shot attempts by the Lady Bulldogs over the next 30 minutes, but the late foul by the Falcons set up Della Futral with the free kick, which the defender converted into her first career goal.
Like the scoreboard, the statistics in the match were close as well. Pfeiffer had 19 shots in the match, while Barton produced 17. Both sides had one corner kick, and the Falcons had two more fouls, 13 to 11. Rothwell made five saves in net for the Lady Bulldogs, while Gilley and Halligan combined on four for Pfeiffer.
Barton will play its next two matches at home, beginning with a 4 p.m. matchup on Saturday against Converse College, last year's Conference Carolinas regular-season champions. The match will be held as part of Family Weekend festivities.
