It didn’t take long for Green Hope’s girls’ soccer team to grab its first goal — coming from the foot of junior captain Reilly Brown just 10 minutes into the team’s second-round playoff game against Chapel Hill — and the Falcons’ defense did the rest.

After goals from Ashley Stokes and Grace Hamashima, the Green Hope defense shut Chapel Hill out, advancing to the third round of the NCHSAA playoffs to face Sanderson.

While the Green Hope offense controlled possession for nearly the entire match, coach Bobby Peterson credited the defense for the dominant 3-0 win — particularly senior sweeper Rachel Wells.

“When we’re playing well it almost always starts with Rachel Wells, No. 5 in the back,” Peterson said. “She’s what controls everything on the defense for us and since we’ve put her back in that sweeper defensive position, we’ve been able to have control.”

For Wells, the defense’s main goal was to control the game and send through balls to Green Hope’s dangerous offensive weapons — a strategy personified in the breakaway goal by Hamashima.

“We have so many good players on offense that we just wanted to give them scoring chances and get them the ball when they’re open,” Wells said.

Chapel Hill is known as a physical, tenacious team, according to Peterson. So he was looking for his team to respond in an even-keeled and intelligent manner.

“They’re a scrappy, physical and aggressive team and the key thing for us was just keeping calm and being able to play our skills,” Peterson said. “Once it started getting heated we got away from our game a little bit and started worrying about calls. So we had to keep our heads and we did a better job of that in the second half.”

The Falcons’ second goal came on a rebound header by Stokes in the 30th minute and after the Falcons failed on several scoring chances in the second half, Hamashima found the back of the net with a strike from just outside the box that grazed off the hands of the goalie and into the mesh.

Next up for Green Hope is Sanderson — a team that Peterson says has a lot of similarities to Chapel Hill.

“They’re also a strong, physical team, and if we let it get into our heads they’re going to take advantage of us,” he said.

To see a video recap of the game, click here.