After playing for 40:53 Tuesday night at the Youth Sports Inc. fields, Lawrence High’s girls soccer team reached a fork in the road of its 2005 season.

The game was called 53 seconds into the second half when Olathe North’s Lindsey Vaught scored her third goal of the game to make the score 10-0 in the Eagles’ favor.

A distraught group of Lions huddled around the bench when LHS coach Jason Clark gave his team an ultimatum of sorts.

“We’ve got a choice,” he said. “We can either let this ruin our season, or we can say, ‘You know what? It was a bad result, but we can come back, work hard, stay positive, and we can fix it.'”

O-North’s Sam Aguilar scored an early goal, and then, in the final 22:35 of the first half, the Eagles went on an eight-goal blitz.

Lawrence was denied any type of clean look at the goal as the Eagles charged harder and harder and their lead grew larger and larger.

Vaught and Hazel Cox created all kinds of open shots for their teammates on the offensive end, and the Lions’ defense simply was overwhelmed. Cox had two goals and an assist, and was responsible for the majority of North’s precision execution.

Plus, the Eagles had some lucky bounces.

For their fifth goal at the 11:27 mark, Cox put the ball in play off a corner kick. The ball went to Brittany Tracz, who attempted to head it in but put it off the crossbar. The ball came down and deflected off of Lions goalkeeper Carly Sakamura, and Tracz punched it in from point-blank range.

The only disappointment felt by the Eagles was coming from the Olathe North parents’ section, as they were forced to sit in the cold through a 10-minute halftime with their team one goal away from ending the game.

After the game, the Lions were quick to leave, and quick to try to put this one in the past. They will get a chance to even out their 2-3 record at home Thursday night against Shawnee Mission Northwest.

“We’ve just got to show up at practice tomorrow,” junior Marti McDonald proclaimed to her teammates after the game. “We can’t harp on this one.”