By Rob Potter
ROSCOE — October 1, 2004 – The Orange County Interscholastic Athletic Association (OCIAA) Division VI girls’ soccer match that took place on Wednesday afternoon in Roscoe was a tale of two halves.
In the first half, Roscoe scored a goal in the opening three minutes and a goal in the final seconds to take a 2-1 advantage at halftime.
But in the second 40 minutes of play, Eldred scored a trio of goals within a span of five minutes. As a result, the Lady Yellowjackets earned a 4-2 victory.
Facing a one-goal deficit, Eldred (5-5, 3-2 OCIAA) was a more determined team in the second half. With 29 minutes and 23 seconds remaining in the match, the Lady Yellowjackets knotted the score at 2-2. Jess Bisland sent a low shot towards the Roscoe goal cage. The ball bounced off the right post and Eldred’s Brittany Borstelmann was there to kick the ball into the back of the net.
Just over two minutes later, at the 26:54 mark, the Lady Yellowjackets took the lead. After a drop ball situation, which is akin to a jump ball in a basketball game, Eldred quickly moved the ball into the Lady Blue Devils’ half of the field.
Lady Yellowjacket forward Sasha Brush gained control of the ball and kicked it past Roscoe goalie Kasse Brock and into the far corner of the net.
Eldred’s Becky Hallock closed out the scoring at the 25:01 mark. The junior forward kicked the ball into the middle of the goal cage from about 15 yards away to give the Lady Yellowjackets a two-goal advantage.
Brock made 10 saves in the match, while Eldred’s Angel Garofalo had four saves.
Not surprisingly, the Lady Yellowjackets responded with those three key goals after a halftime speech by Coach Jolene Porter.
“We talked about how we had to come out and play hard in the second half,” Porter said. “That’s what they did, they played well.”
The coach noted that her squad played with more intensity in the second half after “letting Roscoe get to a lot of [free] balls” in the first half.
“I told them at halftime that we had to find a way to win,” Porter said. “Our motto this season is ‘find a way to win’ and we did that today.”
In the first half, however, it looked as though Roscoe (1-8, 1-3 OCIAA) would be the team to discover a method for victory.
Stacey Duffy scored at 37:05 off an assist from Kendra Harris to give the Lady Blue Devils an early lead.
Nearly 10 minutes later, Eldred tied the match at 1-1 when Kim French kicked the ball into the middle of the net from about 10 feet away. Borstelmann assisted on the goal.
The Lady Blue Devils regained the lead with just four seconds left in the first half. After Eldred was whistled for an infraction in the goal box, Harris took the penalty kick for Roscoe. She sent the ball past Garofalo and into the far corner of the goal cage. The tally gave the Lady Blue Devils a momentum boost heading into intermission.
But the Lady Blue Devils could not hold the lead or momentum in the second half.
“We were very flat in the second half,” Roscoe Coach Cliff Anderson said. “When you get a lead against a good team in the first half, you can’t think you’re going to win the match just by laying back in the second half. We were two completely different teams in the first and second halves and that’s very disappointing.”
Anderson also noted that his team missed a couple of good scoring opportunities in the match. Among them were a first-half penalty kick that hit the goal post and a shot with two minutes remaining in the contest that sailed just wide of the net.
“I think we had the edge on them in the first half,” he said. “If we could have played the second half the same way we did the first, it would have been a different ball game.”