DAPHNE, Alabama — ”Just a classic case of not finishing, not putting it away,” said a dissatisfied Jamie Ferguson after his Bayside Admirals dropped a league match to 1A-4A region rival Cottage Hill Christian 3-2 in a quadruple-overtime shootout at Bayside’s Freedom Field Tuesday.

Coming off a 6-0 road win in Tuscaloosa over 6A Hillcrest-Tuscaloosa last Saturday, Bayside Academy seemed to carry that scoring momentum with no goals allowed into Tuesday’s home match with the Warriors. Striking early the Admirals appeared headed to their ninth shutout so far this season.

The Ads jumped out to a 2-0 lead in the third and ninth minutes of the match and continued to dominate both possession and real estate through the first half and well into the second, but failed to score again in regulation or either subsequent sudden-death OT periods.

In the shootout phase, the first wave of five penalty-kick shooters went 3-for-5 for each team but the Warriors edged BA 4-3 in the second wave of five for the official 3-2 match win.

Bayside had shutout CHC 4-0 early in the season in Mobile. Both teams are now 1-2 in region play with home and away splits and each a loss to UMS-Wright.

“We had our chances, we should have put more goals up when we had the opportunity,” Ferguson said. “But we let up, let them penetrate and just like that they were back even. It’s another lesson in the importance of maintaining intensity every minute and that’s a job we did not get done tonight. We let it get away from us. It’s quite a wake-up call.”

The Warriors had made few quality shot-on-goal attempts deep in Bayside territory, but Eric Carbo managed a break away in the 63rd minute of the match to cut the Admiral lead in half. The Admirals did not allow another deep foray by the Warriors until the 75th minute when Jack Tardibuono made the most of it and finished a long pass from midfield for the 2-2 draw-even goal with 4:18 left on the clock.

Harrison York had scored first the goal for BA with an assist from Ian Hall. Thomas McLendon put the Ads up 2-0 just 8:14 into the match off a lovely cross by Seth Matthews. But CHC keeper Kyle Moran kept the Warriors close with 11 saves in regulation. Bayside keeper Griffin Williams made two saves in the first half and two in the second.

In the first OT Bayside got four quality shots on goal, but missed two and Moran stopped a pair while Williams had no serious shots to defend. In OT 2.0 both teams got decent looks from set plays as well as moving plays, but could not strike the interior of the netting for the walk-off win. BA out shot CHS 4-2 in the second five-minute OT period.

In the shootout, CHC had goals by Gavin Cooley, Chris Floyd, Ethan Hart, Joseph Hii, Robert Nabors, Christian Soutullo and Tardibuono. Bayside was led by York, McClendon, Gaines Minton, Mike Murphy, Collin Douglas and Nick James. Both keepers made two saves each in the shootout.

Bayside slipped to 10-3-1 overall and is hosting Spanish Fort Friday at 7 p.m.

“We’re looking forward to playing the (SFHS) Toros,” Ferguson said. “It should be a good measure of what we’re made of to take on a good team like Spanish Fort after a loss like this. It will be challenging, but this is a good team we have. Cottage Hill showed us we’re not as good as we need to be. We need to be better at staying on the offensive and turning back any threat—no matter what the score. We should have won this game tonight, but we obviously didn’t play strong enough through the whole 80 minutes. I hope we can turn that around by the time we play UMS again.”

BA fell to the UMS-Wright Bulldogs 2-1 in Mobile March 13. They will get a chance to even the score and tighten the standings March 28 at Freedom Field at 7 p.m.

In the win over Hillcrest Saturday, James scored twice for BA and picked up an assist. Chris Johnson, Oliver Minton, Wheeler Rogers and York each added a goal for BA.