It was a day of ups and downs for Richard Montgomery’s varsity girls soccer team. After beating Bishop Ireton High School 2-0, the girls had to settle for a 1-1 draw against the resilient Woodrow Wilson Tigers.
The Rockets were playing in a tournament all day at the Roy Lester Stadium, with their first game at 11:00 am, and their second and final game at 4:00. The girls were led by junior varsity coach Nikki Rieland during the second game, since varsity coach Monica Tarzy was unavailable.
Against the Bishop Ireton Cardinals, they dominated. Goals were scored by sophomore Delaney Goetz, and freshman Kyra Wisneski.
Senior captain Hannah Greco agreed that they had played well, saying, “We’ve been struggling to work together as a team, to connect a lot of our passes, but we were doing a lot better with communicating and shifting [in the game], so that went really well.”
That confidence filtered into the next game, with Greco adding, “I think that we got a really good start this morning, and we’re all really pumped up and we’re excited to be here.” However, the Wilson Tigers would prove a tough opponent to overcome.
At the start of the game, the teams battled, with neither dominating. The ball bounced between halves of the field as each team fought for the upper hand.
Thirteen minutes into the game, RM finally gained it through junior Kate Schuck. With several goals this season already under her belt, she received the ball just outside of the eighteen-yard box, and fired a hard shot past the goalkeeper to put the Rockets up.
The girls went into the second half still ahead. But Wilson met them head on, applying pressure and forcing RM to rise up to the challenge.
But the Tigers managed to break through with seven minutes left in the game. A scuffle in the penalty box led to the ball rolling into the goal. It was cleared before the ball could hit the back of the net, but the referee had seen it cross the goal line and blew his whistle, signifying a goal.
By the end of regulation time, no team had scored a second goal. Ten minutes of sudden death extra time were added to the game; whoever scored first would win the game.
The Rockets had a chance to score with senior Bryony Hollingsworth getting a breakaway in the dying seconds of the first period of extra time. However, her shot instead hit the goal post.
With neither team managing to score, and after a second ten-minute period of sudden death extra time, the game ended in a 1-1 tie.
Although disappointed with the outcome, the girls saw the positives of the game, with junior Katya Morsli saying, “I think we played better as a team in this game, but we should’ve won.”
Coach Rieland agreed: “We played better in the second half: we played well together; looked for feet. But we didn’t get the result we wanted.”
The girls will be looking to get back to their winning ways when they play their next game away at Northwood High School, on Tuesday at 7:15 pm.
Featured photo by Maddie Franke.
