By Rob Potter
ELDRED — September 22, 2000 — Although both teams endured an unusually hot and humid late September day, Eldred must have felt just a bit cooler than their Sullivan West/Jeffersonville-Youngsville counterparts following Wednesday’s Orange County Interscholastic Athletic Association (OCIAA) girls’ soccer match.
A big win can make the sun feel a bit cooler and the air a little lighter.
Down a goal at the half, Eldred (2–2–1, 1–0–1 OCIAA Division V) came back with a pair of goals in the second half to gain a 3-2 win in league match-up.
Just 11:18 into the second half, Eldred’s Kristen Borstelmann scored on a breakaway. Borstelmann beat the Lady Trojan defense from the midfield area and then launched a shot from a few yards in front of the J-Y goal cage. The ball sailed high into the net to knot the score at 2-2.
Then, only 1:58 later, teammate Aimee Schneider scored what turned out to be the winning goal. Taking a pass from Loretta Wolff, Schneider ripped the ball across the goal box and into the far corner of the net for a 3-2 advantage.
Despite moving the ball into the Eldred half of the field several times in the remaining 26-plus minutes of the game, SW/J-Y (2–4, 0–2 OCIAA Division V) could not score an overtime-forcing tally.
Perhaps the Lady Trojans’ best opportunity to knot the score came on a corner kick a few moments after Schneider’s goal. The ball was lofted to the goal cage and hit the top of the crossbar and fell down towards the crowd of players at the front of the net. Before Eldred goalie Casey Williams could get her hands on the ball, SW/J-Y’s Sandra Scholz — who had scored the pair of first-half Lady Trojan goals — kicked the ball while it was still in mid-air, sending the sphere into the net.
But the officials ruled that once the ball had touched the top of the crossbar it was out-of-bounds and therefore no goal was scored.
Eldred coach Laura Schneider noted that scoring first was a key to victory. (Aimee Schneider scored on a pass from Ashley Schneider 14 minutes into the game.)
“Once we scored, the girls thought we could take it,” coach Schneider said. “They were really up for it.”
But after Scholz scored twice to give the Lady Trojans a 2-1 halftime edge, the coach and Lady Yellow Jackets had to make adjustments.
“I had to talk to them a bit at halftime,” she commented. “Our defenders were falling up[field] too much. We weren’t going back.”
For coach Mike Ellmauer and the Lady Trojans, the game was a very frustrating one-goal loss.
“We had our chances,” Ellmauer said. “Eldred had a couple of breakaway opportunities and they went in. And we had some silly mistakes towards the end of the game.”
He praised Schneider and her team, noting Eldred “played very well.” Ellmauer added that he thinks his team is “playing better” as the season moves along.
“We’ll see them again in a couple weeks,” he said, referring to the teams’ division rematch in Jeffersonville.
Erin Bose made nine saves for SW/J-Y, while Casey Williams had four saves for Eldred.