Baylor didn’t waste any time Tuesday night. The Lady Red Raiders put a shot on frame inside the first minute against Girls Preparatory School and never really let up. Maddie Hawk scored twice, and Ayanna Hamler and Helena Lima each added a goal as Baylor beat its crosstown rival 4-1.

Baylor coach Curtis Blair said he expected a fight, whatever the records said.

“Anytime that you have a rivalry, you throw out the records, you throw everything out, and you just got to go play the game,” Blair said. “We knew that we were going to get their best, and we did today.”

Hawk put Baylor on the board with 34:55 left in the first half. Baylor had kept GPS pinned in its own end for most of the opening stretch, and Hawk finished from close range.

GPS had its moments. One run ended with the ball going out for a throw-in, and Bruisers No. 13 got off a good shot that Baylor goalkeeper Ella Metzner turned away.

Baylor nearly made it 2-0 on a hard shot that went just over the crossbar. It didn’t have to wait long for the second goal. Hamler scored from the left side with 18:05 left in the half, and Baylor went into the break up 2-0.

The two-goal lead didn’t make Blair any happier with the first half. His team kept getting into good spots, he said, then wasted them with bad crosses.

“I thought our service, especially the first half, was very, very poor,” Blair said. “We were getting an opportunity to get service in, but the quality of it wasn’t what we wanted.”

Whatever changed at halftime worked, and fast. Hawk scored her second goal 41 seconds after the restart to make it 3-0, and Lima added another with 28:16 left.

Blair said it came down to numbers in the box. In the first half, Baylor usually had one or two players going after crosses. In the second, it had three, four, sometimes five.

“When we started playing two-touch, it really opened up the game for us a little bit,” Blair said. “When you dribbled, it just slowed the game down.”

GPS kept coming. The Bruisers scored with 24:48 left, and Metzner had to make another save soon after as they tried to build on it.

Baylor could have added more. A free kick from just outside the right side of the box went nowhere, and the Lady Red Raiders just missed off a late corner kick. Blair cleared his bench over the final two minutes.

Blair gave GPS credit, too. He called the Bruisers well organized and hard to break down, and said Baylor’s missed chances early let them hang around and play with more confidence as the game went on.

A bigger test comes Thursday. Baylor plays at Knoxville Webb and needs to win by at least two goals to clinch the No. 1 seed.

The teams played three times last season, and Thursday will be their second meeting this year.

“I feel like that’s become a rivalry for us a little bit more than GPS,” Blair said. “They know our girls. We know their girls, and now it’s just the execution. Who goes and executes?”

Blair said the approach is simple: Win first, then worry about the margin.

“I think the first thing is try to go win the game,” Blair said. “And then you try to figure out how do
you get that second goal if we can. They’re a good squad. They’re very well coached.”