Girls Soccer Advances to Quarterfinals

Garden City holds the number 1 seed throughout the Nassau County playoffs and showed why with the 5-0 victory over Malverne/East Rockaway. First round matchups of the number 1 and 16 seeds sometimes puts crazy thoughts into coaches heads as the teams step on the pitch and as the saying goes – ‘on any given day’. So Coaches Heedles and McAuley found themselves trying to keep the girls ready for the first round match up without letting the girls get too confident.

The Lady Trojans were facing a team that had Nassau’s top two goal scorers and one of the County’s best keepers, an undefeated Conference record and an eye on an upset. Plus Garden City would be without three of their starters on the defense side of the ball with Kerry Defliese, Megan Seel and Kelly Donovan, as well as striker Deanna Weisenburger.

With a big home crowd in the stands for the early match Garden City controlled the game from the opening kick but were struggling to get a good look at the Malverne/East Rockaway goal. A little over the midway point of the first half the Lady Trojans finally broke the scoreless tie. With a strong attack into the box a ball deflected into the hand of a Malverne/East Rockaway defender and the referee pointed to the penalty spot. Up to the ball stepped Emma Wieland and she hit a shot that the keeper made a diving stop on but sent the rebound right back to Wieland who calmly placed it into the far corner for the games first goal and ultimate game winner.

The Wieland goal seemed to loosen up the GC girls although the first half ended only 1-0 and Malverne/East Rockaway was going to get the wind in the second half.

With echoes of ‘on any given day’ ringing in his ears, Coach Heedles looked to his senior leaders for the spark during halftime and Chloe Stapleford along with Isabel Klatt and Julia McGuire, delivered the words that lit the fire as the girls came out of halftime with a renewed passion. And the game was never in doubt from that point on as the girls scored four more times on goals by Haley Harder, Kelly George, Klatt and Grace Cameron.

And with a stout defense playing in front of her, GC keeper Caroline Peppard only touched the ball twice in the match. Stepping up to help secure their third straight shutout and eight on the year in front of Peppard were Jackie Morris, Megan Walsh, Kate Farrell and Bridget Shea, while the midfield of Katherine Galzerano, Wieland, Stapleford and McGuire played terrific two way soccer.

The girls play eight seeded North Shore on Tuesday at 1:30 at home.