Wednesday, June 23, 2004
Championship Game
The Scotch Plains U14 intercounty girls soccer team the “Wild Things” and the Union Vipers interrupted their nascent summer vacations and battled each other evenly for 100 minutes in a game for the league championship Thursday night at Evergreen Field, Scotch Plains. Eighty minutes of regulation time, followed by twenty tension filled minutes of sudden death overtime could not decide a winner so rather than let the game be decided by penalty kicks, the coaches agreed the best result would be to share the championship.
“This is a recreational league, not the pros and it would have been too tough emotionally for the girls to have the title decided on something so random as penalty kicks,” said Wild Thing’s coach Bob Berwick. Earlier that afternoon, on a far larger stage an ocean away, the most famous soccer player in the world David Beckham, had knocked a penalty kick over the goal, validating Berwick’s comments on randomness.
A long time high school coach added, “That was the right decision. Kids that age don’t need to have games decided that way.”
Because Scotch Plains owned two previous victories over Union by a combined 6-1 score, the 1-1 tie could be construed as somewhat disappointing but the Wild Things were also somewhat fortunate to hold onto the tie. Trailing 1-0 at halftime for the second straight game, the Wild Things almost evened the score when Kaitlyn Denker’s hard shot was just tipped away into the post. A minute later, Rebecca Von Langen hit a well placed looping shot over the goalie’s head.
The remainder of regulation was slightly in Scotch Plains’ favor but the sudden death periods belonged to Union. Cassie Berwick made a game saving deflection of a Union shot late in the second period and an apparent winning goal was called back for off sides as time expired.
Cassie Berwick and Jaclyn Lazarus did their best to make up for the loss of starting goalie Allie Thek,one of the heroes of the previous win over Rahway .They were abetted by the defense of Lauryn Adams, Christina Dokopoulos, Denker, Amanda Curcie,
Danielle Sette and Kathleen Yan.
The midfield of Katelyn Cavanagh, Whitney Adams, Debra DelleDonne, and Jillian Murphy were tireless in midfield on a very hot night.. The line combination of Rebecca Von Langen, Jessica Santos Cassie Berwick, Magan Mauro Kristin Ciecura, Jaclyn Lazarus and Jegede advanced the ball skillfully and put continual pressure on the Union goal.
“This is a recreational league, not the pros and it would have been too tough emotionally for the girls to have the title decided on something so random as penalty kicks,” said Wild Thing’s coach Bob Berwick. Earlier that afternoon, on a far larger stage an ocean away, the most famous soccer player in the world David Beckham, had knocked a penalty kick over the goal, validating Berwick’s comments on randomness.
A long time high school coach added, “That was the right decision. Kids that age don’t need to have games decided that way.”
Because Scotch Plains owned two previous victories over Union by a combined 6-1 score, the 1-1 tie could be construed as somewhat disappointing but the Wild Things were also somewhat fortunate to hold onto the tie. Trailing 1-0 at halftime for the second straight game, the Wild Things almost evened the score when Kaitlyn Denker’s hard shot was just tipped away into the post. A minute later, Rebecca Von Langen hit a well placed looping shot over the goalie’s head.
The remainder of regulation was slightly in Scotch Plains’ favor but the sudden death periods belonged to Union. Cassie Berwick made a game saving deflection of a Union shot late in the second period and an apparent winning goal was called back for off sides as time expired.
Cassie Berwick and Jaclyn Lazarus did their best to make up for the loss of starting goalie Allie Thek,one of the heroes of the previous win over Rahway .They were abetted by the defense of Lauryn Adams, Christina Dokopoulos, Denker, Amanda Curcie,
Danielle Sette and Kathleen Yan.
The midfield of Katelyn Cavanagh, Whitney Adams, Debra DelleDonne, and Jillian Murphy were tireless in midfield on a very hot night.. The line combination of Rebecca Von Langen, Jessica Santos Cassie Berwick, Magan Mauro Kristin Ciecura, Jaclyn Lazarus and Jegede advanced the ball skillfully and put continual pressure on the Union goal.
# posted by David Lazarus @ 9:09 PM 
