Photo by Kim North St. Clairsville’s Isabella Yeager (18) and Weir High’s Sophia Aperfine (31) chase a loose ball Monday night.

ST. CLAIRSVILLE — A pair of young girls soccer teams having trouble putting the ball in the net met Monday night on the artificial pitch inside Red Devil Stadium.

When the final buzzer sounded at the end of 80 minutes, it was visiting Weir High recording a 3-0 shutout of host St. Clairsville. The win kept the trend of the visiting team prevailing for the third year in a row in the series.

“It’s funny because the first few years I was here the home team always won,” Weir High head coach Jeremy Angelo said. “Now, for the last three years the visiting team has won.”

The Red Riders (5-1-2) scored what turned out to be the only goal they would need when freshman Madeline Cramer curved a corner kick inside the near post in the seventh minute. It was the first shot of the game for the Hancock Countians.

“Madeline has a pretty good corner kick. Sometimes she hits them high and sometimes she goes for the far post,” Angelo noted. “The way the corners are here, she hit it a little short and somehow it went in. It was her decision to hit it like that.”

Weir possessed the ball in the St. Clairsville (2-4-1) end of the pitch for most of the first 40 minutes, but only had the one goal to show on five shots. That’s something that has Angelo puzzled.

“We possess the ball really well, but we’ve just had trouble scoring from in front of the net,” he explained. “It’s only midway through the season and I’d rather score just a couple of goals, not give up any and win the game.”

The Red Riders, who suffered their lone loss last Thursday to county rival Oak Glen, made it 2-0 late in the 68th minute when junior Olivia Baker dribbled the ball down the middle of the field before sending a nifty feed to sophomore Jaidyn Kelly who pounded it into the cage past St. Clairsville goalkeeper Rileigh Wood.

Baker capped her fine night with a breakaway goal in the 76th minute. Freshman Kaelyn Engle sent the ball ahead from near midfield and behind the Red Devils defense. The speedy Baker got to the ball just before Wood, who came out to challenge, did and blasted it into the empty net.

“Scoring has been our biggest issue. We’ve been trying to figure it out by shifting some players around to see if we can find a way to get the ball into the net,” St. Clairsville head coach Wes Stoner said. “We played well defensively, but we’re turning the ball over way too much in the last two-thirds of the field.”

Weir sophomore goalkeeper Rayna Hoover recorded just three saves for her fourth shutout of the season. Wood finished with 11 stops.

The Red Devils didn’t have a shot on goal in the first 40 minutes and didn’t chart one until Zoe Russell’s roller on net in the 47th minute.

“I thought we played pretty even with them in the first half, with the exception of that fluky goal on the corner kick when we had a girl leave the post a little too early,” Stoner added. “But it’s a learning experience.”

St. Clairsville travels to Lisbon Thursday night to meet Beaver Local at 7 p.m.