Rams Girls Soccer Completes Conditioning Camp

After a week-long conditioning camp, girls' soccer coach Kirk Bamford likes what he sees. Coming off a 19-1-3 season including a state championship and a tie for the FCIAC title, the second-year coach was especially pleased with the early season attitude.

"The girls are looking hungry in camp." Bamford added, "We obviously had a great year and with lots of the championship players back and others who would like to increase their playing time along with the girls moving up through the ranks I expect the competition for starting jobs to be very strong."

Bamford will have a new assistant coach this season; Beau Morki who played soccer at Fordham and has been coaching Fordham Prep for the past six years.

The 2010 captains, Caroline Murray, Aly DiCosmo and Jana Persky echoed the coach's assessment, adding that the five vacated spots will be up for grabs.

Murray said, "We lost a lot of good players but we still have a lot who are good. Losing Liz Bruno is big and we also lost a lot of good defenders."

The six former Rams are last years captains, Clare Ashforth, Freddy Kemp, Kacey Pippitt and Emily Goetz along with  Liz Bruno and Kelsey Durkin, 

There were 45 girls on the field at Thursday's camp with five more on the sidelines due to various injuries. The varsity roster will include about 25 players with those who don't make the squad moving over to the junior varsity and freshman teams.

While  last year's achievements may be in the scrapbooks, it's hard not to take a little trip down memory lane  and look back at the two championship games that were so competitive with a lot of drama mixed in.

In the FCIAC title game against Ridgefield , neither team was able to score through regulation time and two 10-minute overtimes. It ended in a 0-0 tie with New Canaan and Ridgefield sharing the crown.

Both teams moved on to the state Class L championships where New Canaan was a finalist again, this time against Avon.

Once again, goals were hard to come by and with just under 10 minutes left in regulation time it was scoreless.  Then New Canaan scored the game's only goal on a brilliant, perfectly executed play. This play got my vote as the Play-of-the-Year.

Murray and an Avon defender were chasing a ball down low, deep in the right corner at about the 10-yard line. The girls collided and both went down, but Murray was able to execute soccer's version of baseball's pop-up slide. In one smooth motion she got control as she bounced up and sent a perfect cross to Liz Bruno on the near post. Bruno, who was  the shortest player on the field headed it in for the 1-0 final score.

Bruno later said,"I scored only two goals all year on headers, but that pass from Caroline was perfect. Give her all the credit for managing to control the ball after being knocked down."

Caroline was named tournament MVP and the team had a championship.