Sophomores Lead Westwood Girls' Soccer to Draw

The Westwood girls' soccer team picked up its first point of the season Tuesday night at home with a 2-2 draw against Millis.

Westwood trailed 2-0 early in the first half but with 11:40 left, and sophomore forward Ebru Hazar put the Wolverines on the board with a perfectly placed goal. Hazar took a difficult cross in traffic directly in front of the net from fellow sophomore Marina Burke and put it in the left corner of the net.

"I like to play a quick 1-2 game with Marina," Hazar said. "She gives me lots of opportunities and always gives lots of good, fast balls."

Trailing 2-1 at the half against an extremely physical Mills squad, the Wolverines' defense settled in.

"We have a lot of young backs," said head coach Tim Chant. "They started to communicate more in the second half and play with more pride and grit, and I think that was the difference."

Westwood made a goalie switch, picked up the pace on offense, and shut Millis out for the entire second half.

"We didn't put our heads down when they played physical with us," Hazar said. "We didn't let it get to us and I think that got in their heads."

Westwood substituted sophomore Nadine Taghian in at goal who made 10 saves for the Wolverines. Taghian capped her night off with a running, game-saving stop as she collided with a Millis player with just two and a half minutes left in the game.

The Westwood offensive game picked up as well in the second half. Hazar had a great scoring chance on a well-defended ball with 22 minutes left but went just left of the post. Six minutes later, Marina Burke picked Hazar and her team up with a goal of her own, knotting the score at two. Burke and Hazar each had one more scoring opportunity but both shots were broken up by the Millis defense.

Despite the two goals for Westwood, coach Chant said he is most proud of how his defense hung in the game.

"Millis put them under a lot of pressure but they showed a lot of toughness and played their hearts out. One of our captains, Mary (O'Sullivan) played especially well. She ran a marathon out there tonight, not just on defense but on offense as well so she deserves a lot of credit."

With the draw, Westwood improves to 0-2-1 on the season and will play next at Ashland on Thursday afternoon.