New Philadelphia girls win rivalry matchup against Dover
New Philadelphia topped Dover 2-1 in the Rivals for a Cause girls soccer matchup at Crater Stadium Saturday. The Quakers’ Lauryn Contini provided the winning goal to break a 1-1 tie in the second half.
In the opener, the Dover boys beat New Philadelphia 3-2. Josh Smith, Evan Burrier and Gabe McDade-Povick scored for the Crimson Tornadoes. For the Quakers, Preston Reiger and Javen Doss found the back of the net.
From Dover Coach James Kline:
On Saturday, it was the rematch from the beginning of the year between the Dover Tornadoes and New Philadelphia Quakers. We had taken the first match 2-1 and knew the Quakers were going to give us a tough match. The match didn’t get off to as fast paced of a start as the first game and I think part of that was due to both teams being able to contain their emotions. Soccer is different from a lot of other sports where getting too emotional can at times be a detriment to your play. The teams battled back and forth with dangerous opportunities for both teams throughout the entire first half. Then, with four minutes left, when it seemed as if the first half might end 0-0, Carley Noretto received the ball, cut a few defenders, and hit a beautiful upper ninety shot from the top of the box to put us up 1-0.
Going into half, again, up 1-0 we talked about a few different strategies and really wanted to try and get a second goal. Having two dynamic players like New Philadelphia has, it is difficult to be comfortable with a 1-0 lead and to try to defend for 40 minutes. We played well out of the half and then off a redirect from one of our defenders a New Philadelphia forward put a beautiful one touch shot to the back corner in the 9th minute of the half. It was an unfortunate goal and one of those bounces that didn’t go our way and a beautiful shot that not many goalkeepers are going to save. We continued to battle, but about eleven minutes later Lauryn Contini showed how dynamic she can be. She beat a defender and found the back of the net with another great shot that got past Addie Martin. With about twenty minutes in the game the girls could have easily packed it in, but continued to try and find an equalizer. However, we came up short with that and lost 2-1. Addie Martin finished with 15 huge saves that kept us in the game.
With that loss, our regular season record was 10-5-2 which is an incredible turnaround from last year’s 1-14-2 season. These girls have worked really hard and put themselves in a great position to do well in the upcoming tournament. Our first tournament game is at home on Wednesday at 6:30 PM versus the winner of tonight’s Zanesville vs. Coshocton matchup.