Garden City Girls Soccer Battle Plainedge

Playing on the Friday of Spirit Week, the Garden City Lady Trojans were fired up to take on a Plainedge team that they easily defeated earlier in the season. However, as the season has progressed the Plainedge Lady Red Devils have played some impressive soccer. They were coming into the game at GC on a four-game winning streak and were looking to add to it.

Garden City has been a little inconsistent this season as Coach Mike Heedles looks for the right combination of talented underclasswomen to mix in with his veteran group. The team currently sits in third place in Conference A1 with a 5-2-3 record with two regular season games remaining. GC has three ties and a win in their last four games as they prepared for the challenge of Plainedge.

The Lady Trojans came out pressuring the ball early throughout the midfield but the Plainedge defense stayed strong and wouldn’t give GC a good look at the goal. The best chances for the home team came from several dead ball restarts. The first chance came from a corner kick off the foot of senior Alivia Gordon. Her kick into the box found Catherine Hayes but defender Julia DeMicco put a body on her and the ball rolled away from keeper Demetra Sideridis just before an oncoming Kylie Brunning could get to it.

Perhaps the best chance the Trojans had was on a free kick from about 20 yards out that senior Riley O’Rourke fired at the goal only to see the shot grabbed by keeper Sideridis to keep the game scoreless.

For each of the chances that Garden City had, Plainedge did have a counter with their best chance coming with about eight minutes left in the half. The Red Devils drove the ball down the left sideline and Kaley DeMicco tracked it down into the corner to make an excellent cross into the box. As GC eighth grade keeper Marisa Patrissi tracked the ball across the goal Plainedge forward Reilley Turowski sent a tough low shot towards the goal. But making a goal saving dive back to her right post was Patrissi. The tremendous save sent the game to halftime knotted at nil-nil.

After a tough halftime talk from coach Heedles the Garden City eleven came out strong, driving the ball up the field. And as the intensity picked up in the second half, so did the tough play by both squads as they played shoulder to shoulder on many 50-50 balls. Some calls being made but others waved to a ‘play on’ by the refs.

With only a little more than four minutes gone in the half, GC was the recipient of one of the few calls that the refs made and were awarded a free kick about 25 yards out. Junior Maya Costa calmly stepped to the ball and rifled a shot that snuck under the cross bar and into the goal. Garden City had capitalized first to take the one goal lead.

The remainder of the half continued to get quite feisty on both sides of the ball with players committing fouls on each team – some called and many others not as the refs were letting them play. With a little over ten minutes remaining in the game, Plainedge possessed the ball in the offensive end and forced a corner kick from the left corner.

The Garden City defense had the initial kick covered as Catherine Hayes headed the ball out of the box, however Plainedge pushed it right back into the area and Sienna Petruccelli got to a loose ball and chipped a seemingly harmless ball towards the net. The ball, however, had other ideas as it moved in slow motion and floated over the head of keeper Patrissi just under the crossbar for the tying goal.

With the game tied and both teams pressing for the win, both teams produced chances but neither could come up with a deciding score. The game ended in a hard fought 1-1 tie leaving Garden City trailing MacArthur by 3 points and South Side by only 1 point in the standings.

Next up for Garden City is Mepham on Wednesday. Then they close out the season at MacArthur on Friday, a match that will determine post season seeds for the Lady Trojans.