Trumbull Girls Soccer Falls To Glastonbury 2-1 In Class LL Finals

After defeating four higher-seeded teams, maybe the law of averages finally caught up with the Trumbull girls soccer team.

Kristen Dragotta scored the eventual winning goal in the 78th minute as top-seeded Glastonbury won its first state championship with a 2-1 victory over the 18th-seeded Eagles in the Class LL final Friday night before 2,500 at Ken Strong Stadium.

"We're really proud of the girls," Trumbull coach Daniel Uhrlass said. "They had a great postseason to get this far. We upset four teams before tonight. It hurts right now but hopefully in a few days time, they'll realize they really have had a great postseason."

"I don't think anyone expected us to get this far," Trumbull senior Melissa Rubin added. "It was definitely a memorable season. I'm always going to remember this year."

Dragotta's goal made it 2-0 and appeared to put away the victory, but Trumbull's Marissa Piccolo scored 30 seconds later to make things somewhat interesting in the final momemts.

Glastonbury's Liz Otto headed in Kayla Orozco's corner 19:45 in the second half to open the scoring after the teams were pretty even through 60 minutes.

Trumbull's defense style definitely frustrated the Tomahawks (17-0-2). The Eagles had 11 shutouts during the season,  including three in a row to reach the final.

"Trumbull did a great job defending," Glastonbury coach Joe Finocchiaro said. "Hats off to them making it as far as they did."

The Tomahawks were making their seventh appearance in the state finals. Remarkably, however, they were 0-6 in their previous trips, including a loss to Westhill in the 2009 final.

While the Tomahawks finally celebrated a state title, they might also be declared unofficial FCIAC champions. All four of their state tournament wins came against FCIAC opponents as they previously defeated Darien, Ridgefield and Staples.

"I told them at the beginning of the season that if we were going to win this thing, we have to win the Fairfield County league because I had a feeling it was going to be all Fairfield County teams (in the state tournament)," Finocchiaro said.

Trumbull (11-5-6) was seeking its ninth state title and fourth under Uhrlass. The Eagles won four in a row from 1996-99,  added under in 2001, then reeled off three more in row from 2006-08.

However, the Eagles generated few good scoring chances against the Tomahawks in a defensive-minded game through the first 60 minutes.

"I thought defensively Glastonbury was outstanding," Uhrlass said. "I thought they closed us down well. There were very few times we got behind them, only once in the first half, and I don't remember many great chances the whole second half."

Glastonbury finally got on the board on a perfectly executed play.

Orozco sent her corner into the middle of the box. The ball connected with Otto and her header beat goalkeeper Emily Doris, who didn't really have a chance on the goal. With the way Glastonbury was playing, it appeared the tomahawks were going to win 1-0.

"The instructions were not to give up corners," Uhrlass said. "They had those two tall center-mids and one of them scored on a very good play."

In 2004, Trumbull also reached the state final as a lower seed, losing to Newtown. Like the team seven years ago, the Eagles certainly will be looking to build on this season's postseason success.

"I glad we made it this far in my senior year," Rubin said. "Not winning this year hopefully will motivate them to get here again next year and hopefully win it."