BROOKINGS – Aberdeen Central kept its undefeated record intact with a 5-1 Eastern South Dakota Conference win over the Bobcats on Tuesday at Fishback Soccer Park.

The Golden Eagles improved to 7-0-3 on the season and 4-0-2 in the ESD with the win.

The visitors got on the scoreboard in the 21st minute on Kensington Eckhoff’s goal, but the Bobcats’ Josie Bono scored the equalizer with a rainbow from 30 yards out with 2:33 left in the half.

But the second half belonged to Central as Deborah Wills put the Eagles back into the lead less than 3 minutes in after scoring on a breakaway.

Seven minutes later, Hillary Mantone got behind the defense and found the back of the net to make it 3-1.

Eckhoff scored her second goal of the game in the 55th minute and then, Megan Fastenau provided for the final margin with her goal with just under 9 minutes to play.

Aberdeen Central held a 28-11 edge in shots with a 13-4 advantage in shots on goal as Grace Mork finished with eight saves.

“I felt we lost our possession game – in the first half we did, too – and maybe we compensated by using up a lot of our energy,” said Bobcat head coach Nathan Tritle. “Aberdeen is not a bad team – they are undefeated for a reason – they have a lot of speed up top; I felt that had we been able to possess in the midfield a little bit better, I think we could have challenged their back four, which we did in the first half a little bit more.

“They pressured us all over and we lost our ‘passes to feet’ and that’s the way it goes sometimes. The girls played hard; all you can do is the best you can.

“Kudos to Aberdeen – they came and executed their game plan perfectly, pretty much.”

Brookings, which dropped to 3-6 and 3-3 in the ESD, travels to Sioux Falls on Saturday to face O’Gorman at 3 p.m. at McEneaney Field.