Girls Soccer: Dover scores in final minutes to beat Tusky Valley
ZOARVILLE – Dover’s Abby Jones found teammate Carley Noretto with 2:30 remaining to lift the Tornado girls soccer team to a 1-0 win over Tusky Valley Wednesday.
Dover is 9-4-2. Tusky Valley is 10-3.
Dover Coach James Kline provided these summaries of the team’s last three games.
Dover 1 – Tusky Valley 0
Going into the game the girls seemed ready to turn things around, but once the game started both teams seemed to be a little off and flat. The first half was one where we looked like the better team, but just couldn’t connect for much or capitalize on any of the chances we earned. Both defenses gave up chances, but both were able to limit how dangerous those chances were.
At half, we talked about trying to turn up the energy and grind out a victory. That’s what the Tornadoes did. The girls worked for the next 36 and half minutes to find a goal with two minutes and 30 seconds remaining. The way the team celebrated after the goal summed up the game perfectly. A team celebration turned into a pile of exhausted, collapsed Tornado players. However, there was still time remaining and as you could expect, the last two or so minutes were intense. The Trojans tried to find an equalizer all the way up until the final whistle blew. Our defense held strong and shut them down and out.
With the win, our overall record improves to 9-4-2 with two games remaining until the playoffs start. We travel to Wooster next Thursday and end the regular season with a short trip next Saturday to New Philadelphia for our “Rivals for a Cure” game.
John Glenn 2 – Dover 1 (Oct. 2)
On Monday night, the Dover Tornadoes hosted the John Glenn Muskies.
This was a matchup against the No. 2 and No. 3 ranked team in the East District. Early in the game, John Glenn was able to find a goal off a nice through ball and a beautiful one touch finish. Credit to our girls, a lot of teams would have folded after giving up such an early goal, but ours didn’t. About 10 minutes later, Miley Patton was able to bring down a cross from Abby Jones and beat the keeper to tie the game up 1-1. Unfortunately, we were unable to close out the half when a Muskie player was able to beat a couple of our defenders and crushed a shot past our goalkeeper to make the score 2-1 with two and half minutes left in the half.
Again, credit goes to the girls because we could have easily folded at half and went through the motions which would have probably led to an ugly final result. Our girls battled for 40 minutes and had opportunities to tie the game up, but unfortunately, we were unable to convert those chances.
The loss was a tough one, but a learning experience to say the least. John Glenn is a very tough team and we will most likely see them again in the tournament. The loss dropped our record to 8-4-2.
Dover 5 – Canton Central Catholic 0 (Sept. 28)
We traveled to Canton on Thursday night to take on the 3-7 Central Catholic Crusaders.
From the whistle, we controlled the game’s tempo and possession. We knew we had a great opportunity to build off our last game and wanted to keep that momentum going. Which we did 12 minutes into the first half. Abby Jones beat her defender to play a nice ball across the box that Miley Patton was able to put a nice touch on to put us up 1-0. Then, about 14 minutes later we were able to find another goal off another cross by Abby, but this time it was Cashlyn Harmon who was able to settle the cross and place a shot into the side netting for our second goal. We didn’t score as many goals as we would have liked in the first half, but we created a lot of opportunities, which is a great place to be.
During halftime, we focused on the mindset of putting teams away. 2-0 leads are always scary leads in soccer and we needed to put this team away. That’s what Carley Noretto did seven minutes into the second half. Carley cut her defender to get into the box and hit a really nice shot that hit the bottom of the crossbar and bounced into the goal for our third goal. Eight minutes later Belen Bravo-Angel beat her defender and hit a ball that split three different defenders to find the back of the net for our fourth goal of the game. Then, with about 18 minutes left in the half, Abby Jones decided to score a goal for herself instead of assisting another one by hitting a well-placed right-footed shot past the Crusaders goalkeeper.
The season is a long one and games like these are moments where we are able to get some of the starters some rest and give the opportunity to some of our younger players to get some game experience. It was nice to be able to give about 15 minutes to everyone on the team which might not seem like a lot, but will go miles for some of the younger girls on our team.
Lastly, as a coach, one thing I am always telling the girls is how important keeping a shutout is. All 23 players contributed to keeping the shutout Thursday which is always tough no matter who you are playing.