MONMOUTH — St. Dom’s did everything but score Monday afternoon. The Saints also did a smack-up job marking Monmouth girls’ soccer standout Kylie Kemp, limiting her to one significant look at the cage during the entire second half.

As is sometimes the case in soccer, one was enough.

The junior beautifully bent a direct kick from about 20 yards. Saints goalie Kelly Pomerleau’s only recourse was to leap high in the air and brush it off the crossbar.

Freshman Madison Bumann booted home the leftovers with 12:45 remaining in regulation, and it held up for a 1-0 MVC victory.

“There’s a soccer god up there today,” Monmouth coach Gary Trafton said. “They just took it to us in the second half. They passed real well. We just hung in and caught a few breaks and got one good opportunity.”

St. Dom’s wasn’t nearly done. The speed of sisters Kelley and Kayla McLellan and Marley Byrne won almost every loose ball in the Mustangs’ defensive zone, leading to numerous point-blank shots before and after Bumann’s goal.

Monmouth senior Adriana Gonzalez twice denied St. Dom’s the equalizer, diving low to stymie Faith Grady from 15 yards with 3:30 left and making a sensational, chest-high catch save on Kayla McLellan from even closer range in the final minute.

Gonzalez finished with 13 saves, offsetting the Saints’ advantages of 13 shots to four in the second half and 24-12 overall.

“The very last one I honestly thought I wasn’t going to catch, because it was up high and that’s my weakness, Gonzalez said. “I caught it and surprised myself.”

Monmouth (8-0) is the lone remaining undefeated and untied team in the league after its fourth one-goal victory and fourth consecutive shutout.

St. Dom’s and Lisbon also entered the week unbeaten. The Saints (7-1-1) surrendered just their second goal of the season.

“We didn’t capitalize. We made the adjustments at halftime and I think it showed in that second half, because play was probably 80-20,” St. Dom’s coach Kathy Little said.

You might even be able to push that number to 90 or 95 percent in the Saints’ column.

Play stayed in the Mustangs’ end for most of the half prior to Kemp’s goal. Every time a Mustangs fullback got to the ball, the Saints seemed to intercept.

“We’d get to the ball and we couldn’t get it to somebody’s feet,” Trafton said. “They attack the ball and they move very well off the ball.”

Monmouth finally did locate Kemp along the right wing a few footsteps ahead of Poulin. The two eventually collided just shy of the corner, with the whistle blowing in Kemp’s favor.

Bumann took advantage of the near-miss and the resulting rebound for her third varsity goal.

Ten days ago, Monmouth won a 1-0 game over Mt. Abram on a similar bounce with seven seconds remaining in regulation.

“It’s a little bit nerve-wracking, but it does give us confidence. We feel like we can do well this season,” Bumann said.

“Coming into this game a lot of us were scared. But we pushed through it and mentally got into it,” Gonzalez added. “We’ve never beaten St. Dom’s. We’ve never had this kind of record. Just beating them is so big.”

Monmouth defenders Shannon Buzzell, Sidney Wilson, Taylor Spadafora and Lenny Urquhart played integral roles in keeping the Saints off the board in the first half. Urquhart, a senior, is the only one in the group who is not a freshman or a sophomore.

Reigning Western Class C champion St. Dom’s lost Byrne to a hip injury late in the game.

The Saints came up empty on six corner kicks in the contest and narrowly missed wide left and wide right on numerous opportunities during its second-half barrage.

“We can only get better. We have to bounce right back from this and we can’t hang our heads, because the competition is very hard,” Little said.

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