APEX — As if having to travel to perennial powerhouse Apex High for a first-round playoff game wasn’t hard enough, the Knightdale girls’ soccer team was also without leading scorer Kaitlyn Eckert for the first time all season.

The Lady Knights, which lost Eckert to an ACL tear in the regular season finale, lacked their usual offensive threat on Wednesday, and the numbers tell the story. Apex out-shot Knightdale (7-7-1) by a 24-2 margin and cruised to a 6-0 win.

Six different Cougar players, three in the first period and three in the second, scored goals.

“We’re coming in to a really tough conference. Any seed that you play in the Tri-Eight is going to be a really tough game,” Knightdale coach Jeff Deal said. “We just couldn’t get enough possession in the midfield to get that pass behind their defense.”

The inability to move the ball into the Apex box was compounded by a flurry of late-season injuries that forced Deal to shuffle his lineup with a depleted roster.

“It’s been well-documented how many injuries we’ve had this season and how we’ve had players playing out of position,” Deal said.

With two players already on crutches and Eckert wearing a knee brace, yet another Lady Knights player went down late in the second.

This time, Deanna Gage re-injured an already banged-up ankle and had to be carted off the field. Although the injury looked far worse, Deal said after the game that Gage would be fine.

The good news for Knightdale, however, is not a single player will be calling this their final high school soccer game. This senior-less roster that led the Lady Knights to the third seed in the Greater Neuse Conference this year will return in 2009-10 intact.

Throw in the fact that this year’s conference champ, Holly Springs, will be moving to the newly-minted Tri-Nine Conference, and next season could be a special one for the Knightdale program.

Deal said he will meet with the team after some time passes, hoping everyone can look at the season more objectively and focus on next year.

“We hope we can get everybody back next season, we hope there’s a lot of desire and a lot of want-to out of the team, knowing that a lot of them are going to be seniors next year,” Deal said.

“Looking at a lot of match-ups within the conference, I’ve got to say they should be up there. We were in the top three this season, and I really think we should be in it for the championship next season. By no means is it going to be a walk-through, but we hope we can be in it and put up a good fight for it. It’s a realistic aspiration I think.”