"I've tried to keep the team up. I've kept yelling stuff and trying to encourage them and we finally came through," she said.
Patterson said a little pregame scouting of the neighboring Lady Lions helped her and fellow co-captain Andi Martin get the team fired up for the day's game.
"We kind of kept up with Garrard to see kind of how they played as a team. Me and Andi just kind of got the team together, talked to them and let them know that we can really do this if we play as hard as we can," she said.
"And I think the girls did that. They did really good."
Lincoln "did really good" by dominating control of the ball. In the first half of the game, Lincoln allowed Garrard County minimal offensive opportunities, keeping play on the Lady Pat end of the field.
The payoff for offensive control came quickly with Chelsi Walls working the ball to center of goal and kicking it in to the back of the goal just over five minutes into play for a 1-0 Lady Pat edge.
The 1-0 lead would stand at the half with Garrard, although weak on offense, coming through with a tremendous defensive effort to keep the Lincoln shots from hitting their target.
Excitement abounded on Lincoln's goal end in the first half, however, it was a real yawn for one Lady Patriot - Lincoln goalkeeper Brittney Gooch.
"I don't think I touched the ball at all the first half," Gooch said. "I was glad for the team but I got a little bored."
Another Gooch wasn't worried about the goalkeeper's lack of play.
"I don't have a problem with that," said Lady Pat Coach David Gooch. "If she's bored, then that means our defense is doing its job."
Gooch, the keeper, had faith in her defense but she did expect to be more involved in the action.
"I expected to get more touches on it than I did but I'm just so excited at how well our defense played. They did a really good job," she said.
Lincoln's offense produced a second goal in the second half with Camilla Gooch scoring midway of the period. Patterson got the assist on the score, passing the ball in to Gooch who was coming up the center to goal. Gooch footed the pass and punched it in from 10-yards out to make it 2-0.
After the goal, there would be no more boredom for Brittney Gooch in goal. Garrard (0-5) would challenge Lincoln's sophomore keeper late in the second half, moving the ball into their own territory, attacking the goal and pounding in shot after shot.
Despite the relentless pounding, Gooch and the Lady Pat defense held their ground, and the ball, to earn the shutout win.
"Have to give it to Brittney. She worked hard and she did had several saves there at the end, including a one-on-one, which is what we've been practicing to avoid," said Coach Gooch. I'm real proud of her. She got a shutout. True, the first half was kind of easy but towards the end there, there was nothing easy about that. It was a well-earned shutout."
Patterson was happy to see the Lincoln defense produce and keep the Lady Lion score at zero.
"Our defense did really good," she said. "We did so much better this game than last game, or any of the games. It's exciting. It's a shutout."
Gooch said hard work in practice probably played a key role in Lincoln's strong defensive play against Garrard.
"We made some adjustments from that last game involving how we shift toward the center of the field to help position ourselves for defense, as well as, offense. But I think that it really worked defensively," he said.
"We worked on shifting side to side so that we didn't have as many one-on-ones. We're tending to play our wings to far on the wing. When the ball moves to the left side of the field, the right wings have to move to center. We worked on that and I think that's why we were a little more effective defensively," Gooch said. "Now we have to work on that shift forward for our offense if we want to get more shots on goal."
"That comes with conditioning too."
Tuesday's soggy field did produce some positives for the Lady Pat team.
"We did much better at slide tackling and I think that was due to fact that it didn't hurt as much to slide," Gooch said. "We had many beautiful slide tackles and I don't think we had one foul against us on the slide tackle. We played real aggressively and real clean with slide tackles, which I like to see."
Tuesday's win was well received as it followed right on the heels of a disappointing showing at Mercer County last Thursday.
Alex Prigmore notched a hat trick and more against Lincoln, scoring five first-half goals to lead the Lady Titans to a 6-1 win over the Lady Patriots.
