Sports
Girls Soccer: Overtime Ends at 1-1 in Pleasantville
Panthers tie with crosstown rival in second matchup of the season.
It looked as though ’s girls soccer team had things all but wrapped up against Westlake yesterday, but Westlake quickly reminded spectators things aren’t always what they seem.
Pleasantville controlled the game for most of the first 78 minutes of regulation and the lead courtesy of sophomore Julia Eisenberg (assist by Patricia Garibaldi), who scored Pleasantville’s lone goal, but it was the last two minutes that hurt them.
“We can control in the midfield area and around the goal but we’re having a problem finishing,” Eisenberg said. “We have to get more feet on balls around the net and we have to improve on our scoring.”
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Pleasantville watched its lead turn into a tie as Westlake senior Kathleen Farrell headed in the tying goal on an assist from McKenzie Redfern with just over two minutes to go. Both teams battled it out— especially defensively— during the overtime period, and gave spectators an intense and exciting ending as the game concluded in a 1-1 tie.
“This is a local rivalry and the girls on both sides played hard,” said Pleasantville Coach Tom Micucci. “We knew they weren’t going to stop playing even though we were up and things went back and forth and they had a nice header there late that pushed us into overtime. We had some great chances in overtime, but we just couldn’t convert.”
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Pleasantville and Westlake played each other two weeks ago and Pleasantville squeaked out a 1-0 victory, which created a lot of buildup and anticipation for this game as the rivalry continued.
“At halftime I just told the team to keep working hard and the girls kept fighting out there and they were rewarded for their efforts,” Westlake Coach Bob Bendlin said. “We’re next door neighbors so these rivalry games are always played hard by both teams and today was another example of that.”
Pleasantville and Westlake used a tandem of goalies and on the Pleasantville side Amy Walsh had three saves and Amanda Psyhojos had five saves. For Westlake, Sam Briggs tallied eight saves and Megan Maher had 10 saves.
