The effort was there for the Scotland girl’s soccer team Wednesday night and so were the opportunities.

Only one thing was missing from the contest: a win.

Hoke County scored a goal in each half to come away with a 2-0 victory over the Lady Scots at Pate Stadium.

“It was a much better played game than Monday night,” said Scotland Coach Colin McDavid. “We created very nice chances but we were just not able to finish. We dominated the second the half, they (Hoke) had one chance that was created by us and a goal came from that. We cannot have those kinds of mistakes.”

Jennifer Valliant found the back of the net with 23:06 to play in the first half.

The physicality was evident in the game as Kristin Gregory and Morgan Sunderland picked up yellow cards in the second half.

“The girls were playing really tough out there,” McDavid said. “We realized that Hoke was a physical team. Sometimes we were a little overly aggressive and we need to work on finding the right balance in that department.”

The Lady Bucks Antanesha McNeill managed to poke one past Destinee Groves with 27:29 remaining in the game.

Hoke (4-3-2, 2-1 SEC) outshot Scotland (2-4-1, 1-2 SEC), 9-7 in the game. Groves stopped seven shots in a losing effort.

The Lady Scots will travel to Lumberton on Monday night at 7 p.m.

In jayvee’ action, Jaelyn Strickland put Scotland up 1-0 in the first half, but were denied their second win of the season as Hoke scored two second half goals to take the game, 2-1.