The King’s Fork High School girls’ soccer team continued to show it belongs in the same conversation with the best teams in the area after dealing visiting Western Branch High School a 1-0 loss on Tuesday evening.

“We knew that this was kind of a milestone win for us,” Lady Bulldogs coach Mike Marston said.

The Lady Bruins are one of the most highly regarded teams in South Hampton Roads, and yet King’s Fork seemed to demonstrate more control early on in Tuesday’s match.

Marston estimated that in terms of quality scoring chances, the Lady Bulldogs probably had five or six compared to Western Branch’s one in the first 20 minutes.

KF senior Lindsay Ransome scored the lone goal of the match with about 23 minutes remaining in the first half. She praised sophomore Cydney Nichols for her role in the play.

“Cydney came, and she kind of made the defender commit to her so that I could become free, and then once the ball was free, I kicked it in,” she said.

But the complexion of the game change later on when Lady Bulldogs sophomore center defender Skylar Wall went down with an ankle injury.

“That’ll be a humongous loss to say the least if it’s anything severe,” Marston said, noting she is a first team all-conference player.

The game seemed to become more evenly matched after Wall’s departure. Western Branch was able to go on the offensive more often.

But Marston said what gave his team the edge “was just mental fortitude.”

He said, “Everybody else had to pick up the slack evenly, because replacing somebody like Skylar is not a burden one player can handle, because it also left holes in our attack.”

Ransome moved back to fill Wall’s center defender position.

“I went back to my roots because I started as a defender when I was little,” Ransome said.

She did well in marking one of the Lady Bruins’ fleet-footed strikers.

“Luckily, we’ve experimented with it with Lindsay back there a little bit, so we could stay somewhat organized, but hopefully Skylar’s just got a sprain,” Marston said.

He was also pleased that the team has five days off before its next game.

“So she’ll have a little bit of time to recover, and then we have three games — Monday, Wednesday, Friday,” he said. “So, it’ll be our first real test since early in the season of having that many games in that dense a period on the schedule. That’ll test our stamina a little bit, which it comes at a good time in the season to help us kind of get sharp.”

King’s Fork visits Churchland, Smithfield and Tabb high schools on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, respectively.