4 First-Half Goals Hurt New Canaan Girls Soccer in 6-2 Loss vs. Undefeated St. Joe’s

 

The injury bug has taken a sizable bite out of the New Canaan girls soccer squad in 2015.

After starting the year 4-0 and relatively injury free, the girls entered Thursday’s showdown against the undefeated Cadets of St. Joe’s having lost six of their previous seven games with eight players missing some amount of game time during that stretch— including senior starters Ellie Aliapoulios (wrist) and Schuyler O’Mahony (torn MCL), who are not expected to return to play.

And while the recent return of a couple starters from injury for the Rams (5-7), junior forward Madison Starr and senior forward and co-captain Sami Stewart, gave them some well-desired firepower to have a chance to upset the Cadets (12-0) for the second time in two seasons after last year’s FCIAC tournament win — St. Joe’s put up four goals in a 10:07 span in the middle portion of the first half and never looked back on their way to a 6-2 victory.

“It’s been a little disruptive, to be fair,” head coach Kirk Bamford told NewCanaanite.com when discussing the slew of injuries to his roster. “I think also when you get into a rhythm and then you have so much chopping and changing, it’s difficult to go through that. But the girls haven’t been terrible. At times it’s just been silly errors—breakdowns in individual play—that have cost us rather than playing terrible as a team. We’ve played well and competed really well at times [these last eight games]; unfortunately the scoreboard doesn’t really reflect it. But that’s soccer sometimes. But the girls are pushing hard, playing with a lot of character.”

New Canaan’s first 15 minutes of the contest were as good as you could’ve asked for on the defensive end as the back line of senior co-captains Mia Carroll and Caroline Gordon and their teammates only let two scoring chances occur — both of which were saved by fellow co-captain Katie Donovan, who despite allowing five of the six goals, stood on her head to make some spectacular saves.

However, at the conclusion of the 16th minute, St. Joe’s senior standout forward Jenna Bike, a member of the U.S. Women’s Soccer U-19 team, received a pass from her Cadet teammate Marissa Grasso that placed her about 10 yards out. Once she possessed the ball she deked her defender then completed a spin-move around her, then struck the ball on net, beating Donovan to put the Cadets on the board 1-0.

“She’s a special player,” Bamford said of Bike. “That first goal was a quality shot – one you’re not going to see from anyone else probably. When you got an opponent who can pull that type of a quality move against you, it’s going to be tough.”

And St. Joe’s fed off their star as Bike added a header just a little over four minutes later off a ball that was initially saved by Donovan when she poked it off the crossbar. But because she couldn’t corral it, Bike got her head on the rebound.

Just a minute later, the distributor on the first goal, Grasso, found the ball loose in a crowd in front of the New Canaan net and pooched it in to make it 3-0. Then less than five minutes later, Samantha Lello capped off the scoring run for St. Joe’s with a bomb of a goal off a free kick from about 40 yards out — the boot sent Donovan deep into her net so that even though the New Canaan goalkeeper got her hands on it, it was for naught as the goal put the Cadets up 4-0, which is the lead they took into halftime.

St. Joe’s would add two more goals in the second half, including one from Jenna Bike’s younger sister Tory that made it 6-0.

But the Rams would not go down without a fight as they continued to play with inspiration down the stretch which resulted in two goals from Carroll — one off of a corner where she put her foot on the loose ball in front and past Cadet keeper Veronica O’Rourke, and another off a penalty kick that occurred because of a St. Joe’s handball in the box.

Bamford’s proud of the ‘never-say-die’ attitude his squad possesses and hopes that they carry the performance from the second half forward with only four games remaining in the regular season and a spot in the state tournament not too far away from being clinched.

“In the first half we had opportunities to evolve the game a bit better than we did. But I thought we were a bit anxious and tense at times on the ball and we didn’t use the ball as well as we could have. But in the second half, we showed we can play soccer as well. So it’s good to see that all the players are stepping up and they’re looking to have a go, and everyone who went in there today gave a good account of themselves. This all bodes well and looks good. I think, again, the three players up front [today] haven’t played together in three weeks. Hopefully we’re getting everybody back healthy that we can. Hopefully we’ll be ready to push on and have another few parts to our season. We got Central next on Saturday so that’s our next focus. It’s one game at a time.”