WINTERSVILLE — St. Clairsville junior Delaney Florence weaved her way through the heart of the Indian Creek defense and booted a well-placed shot past a diving Elizabeth Hope.

That knotted the score at 1-1 with 33:50 showing in the first half. The Red Devils next best scoring opportunity wouldn’t come until 10 seconds left in regulation.

The Redskins and Red Devils battled to a 1-1 tie Monday at Kettlewell Stadium and Creek coach Cate Calissie couldn’t be happier with her club’s defensive performance.

Following Florence’s score, Creek did a better job of challenging loose balls, aggressively defending against St. Clairsville’s short passing game and limiting scoring opportunities.

“We have six seniors who are very familiar with St. Clairsville and their style of play,” Calissie said. “Once we saw we were able to defend calmly, it helped. We have a lot of basketball girls and it played to (our) advantage because it was basic defense.

“St. Clairsville plays incredibly hard and is a hard team to defend, but I thought our girls played really well.”

Indian Creek got the scoring started early when Abi Starkey played a throw-in off the bench and with a high kick, lofted a shot to the left corner of the net past St. Clairsville Rileigh Wood.

That came with 37:46, just a few minutes prior to Florence’s strike, giving Creek the early 1-0 advantage.

Like Creek, St. Clairsville defense went into lockdown mode and its back line, consisting of Lanie Gardner, Jocelyhnn Zucco, and either Makenna Booth or Lacy Tuttle prevented Creek from getting a good look at the net.

The Redskins totaled eight shots on goal, but just two in the second half, neither of which posed a legitimate threat to Wood.

“Their back three is solid,” Calissie admitted. “Our girls hustled after it, and it’s been the story of our season, just not finishing balls in the middle and that happens sometimes. But they played hard.”

St. C. did have a near miss in the second half when a pass from Savannah Grim toward the net saw Florence charging toward the net, just finishing a half-step late as Hope corralled the ball before the Red Devils’ junior could strike it toward the net.

The final opportunity came with just 10 seconds left as senior Megan Malin received a pass around the 15-yard line and missed just high for a potential go-ahead score.

Considering his team had scored 19 goals in its last three games, St. Clairsville coach Wes Stoner was expecting a bit more from his club.”Meg had a really good chance at the end, but we had some great chances in the first half but we have to finish,” Stoner said. “That’s been the difference for us this year, it’s finishing, it’s been goal scoring. The last couple of games we’d finish and it’s shown. This is a game that I just wasn’t happy with the second half.

“We abandoned our game and started to play long like we were in a rush to hurry up and score one. That’s what we talked about after the game is how did that shift happen, because that wasn’t us in the second half.”

The Red Devils record now stands at 5-5-2 with one game left against Cambridge before the upcoming seeding meeting for the postseason. Stoner lamented the difference between the actual result and what a potential win could have meant.”

“A tie isn’t going to hurt you, but we were hoping to (hopefully) get two this week, with this one, plus hopefully Cambridge on Wednesday,” Stoner said. “(Potentially) having seven wins looks a lot better than six or five.”

Creek returns to action Thursday when the Redskins play host to Harrison Central.

Hope finished with four saves for ICHS while Wood accounted for six for St. C.