Girls Soccer Beats Manhasset

The Garden City girls team has had great success over the past five years and are continuing the strong winning tradition. Coaches Mike Heedles and Scott McAuley have been preaching to the girls that with hard work, playing positional soccer and executing on your chances, the wins will keep on coming. Since a pivotal loss at Manhasset at the end of September, the Lady Trojans have dominated their opponents focused on the return match on home turf. The girls have outscored the opposition 12-3 coming into yesterdays match against Manhasset, with four straight conference wins.

The first half was a battle of two strong defensive teams that put high pressure on the ball and did not sit back to allow opportunities for either teams forwards. With under 15 minutes left in the half DeFliese sent a strong cross into the box that somehow found the head of Julia McGuire in heavy traffic. McGuire used her height advantage to get a touch on the ball and redirected it into the goal for the 1-0 lead. Garden City also had several other scoring chances with shots from Defliese, Isabel Klatt and Katherine Galzerano just missing the net – actually hitting a couple of cross bars and a post.

The second half was controlled by Garden City with much of the play in front of the Manhasset keeper but they couldn’t get a clean shot for that elusive insurance goal. And that proved almost fatal as Manhasset was able to cash in on an excellent free kick from just outside the box with a little under four minutes remaining in the game.

Garden City, as they have done in previous games, responded to the goal with a fire in their belly attacking the Manhasset defense down both sidelines. The aggressive play resulted in a free kick for GC from just in front of their bench and as Galzerano looked over the defense she found a familiar target in Defliese trying to free herself from a defender. With a perfect ball that Kerry could control and move around a couple of defenders she struck the ball sending it into the corner of the goal giving the keeper no chance at a save. Garden City had regained the lead and ultimately would taste revenge for the loss at Manhasset earlier this season.

The girls have one more Conference match at home against Plainedge on Tuesday with a chance to wrap up the top seed in the playoffs. Regardless of seed the playoffs begin on Friday, October 23rd at home.

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