Ithaca Journal
DRYDEN — The girls teams at Dryden and Elmira Notre
Dame don’t get to face each other much these days. So they decided to
treat fans to a little extra soccer in a renewal of their lost rivalry
Saturday afternoon at Tompkins Cortland Community College.
It
took a goal from freshman Taylor Bennett with just under two minutes
left in the second 10-minute overtime period to give Dryden a 2-1
victory over the Crusaders in the Interscholastic Athletic Conference
Large School championship game.
Bennett’s header off a corner kick sent the Purple Lions (14-1) to their first IAC title since 2005.
“It
definitely took a lot of effort,” she said of the win. “I was very
proud of my team. I feel like we played amazing and we deserved this.”
North
Large School champion Dryden deprived the South champion Crusaders
(13-2-1) of their first conference championship since 2004.
The teams had some memorable battles before the IAC was realigned in 2008. This contest added to that history.
“We
always had incredible games with Notre Dame in year’s past and we
haven’t gotten to see them in the last few years,” Dryden coach Janine
Bennett said. “It wasn’t any surprise to me that we were going to have a
tooth-and-nail type of game.”
The
Bennett family was a big part of Saturday’s title. Janine is the mom of
Taylor and Binghamton University-bound senior Leighann Bennett, who
scored the Lions’ first goal off a well-placed direct kick with 16:36
remaining in the first half.
The
combination of a brisk wind, a quick and bouncy artificial turf and
stingy defensive teams made it tough for the offensive players. There
were only 14 shots in the 100 minutes of soccer, with 10 of them by
Dryden.
The score
remained 1-0 until Notre Dame’s Rebecca Watts put a direct kick into the
upper right corner of the net from about 30 yards away with 12:49 to go
in regulation.
“I
thought we played outstanding today,” Notre Dame coach Steve Weber
said. “It’s not the best surface in the world for us to play on. I
thought we made a lot of adjustments today.
“I’m real proud of the kids. I thought we played a good game.”
Those
adjustments included lineup changes after two players were lost to
injury for part of the game, including all-state defender Brittany
Schutrum.
One of
the Crusaders’ few defensive lapses came on the winning goal by Taylor
Bennett, who headed in a perfect corner kick off the foot of Abigail
Barr.
“We’ve been
working on corner kicks a lot during our last few practices,” Taylor
Bennett said. “It was just execution all the way. … I had a girl and I
lost her as soon as I started my run. I felt like I was free.”
The Crusaders had allowed only seven goals coming into the contest, but Bennett’s winner exploited a weakness.
“We
have trouble defending players like her on corners sometimes,” Weber
said. “We were trying not to give up any corners at that point.”
Janine
Bennett said her team was impacted by the wind and also
uncharacteristically played a lot of long balls, following the
Crusaders’ lead in that respect. She wanted to make sure the Bobcats
played to their strengths in overtime.
“Coming
into overtime the big talk was, ‘We’ve got to play our game. You’ve got
to play our game, play it on the ground, play the way we practice,’”
she said. “We have such a young team — I start six freshmen, I start a
seventh-grader — for them to be able to take control, for them to be
able to settle back into our game speaks well of them.”
Photos from the game
No comments:
Post a Comment