By Rob Potter
LIVINGSTON MANOR — September 23, 2005 – The first half of Wednesday afternoon’s Orange County Interscholastic Athletic Association (OCIAA) Division VI soccer match between the visiting Roscoe Lady Blue Devils and the Livingston Manor Lady Wildcats featured plenty of goals.
Unfortunately for the Lady Blue Devils, most of those goals were scored by Manor.
The Lady Wildcats scored five goals in the opening 40 minutes of play to take a 5-2 lead at halftime. Manor added a goal early in the second half to record a 6-2 victory.
Manor improved to 3-1 overall and 3-0 in Division VI, while Roscoe fell to 1-4 overall and 0-1 in Division VI.
Leading the Lady Wildcats’ offense was senior forward Tiffany Parker, who scored the first four goals of the match.
Parker put Manor on the scoreboard just 1 minute and 11 seconds into the contest when she sent a high shot over Roscoe goalie Kasse Brock and into the far corner of the net.
At the 5:44 mark, Parker found the back of the net on a low shot from about 15 yards away.
Exactly one minute later, Parker struck again. A teammate kicked the ball at Brock, but she couldn’t quite control it. The ball rolled away from her and Parker quickly ran to it and kicked it home.
With precisely 10 minutes elapsed in the contest, Parker kicked the ball into the far corner of the net from about 20 feet away.
While the Lady Blue Devils were stunned by the barrage of goals, they certainly did not quit.
Roscoe’s Kourtni Guzzo scored on a direct kick four minutes after Parker’s fourth goal to make it a 4-1 game.
Just over three minutes later, Roscoe’s Kendra Harris scored on an assist from Stacey Duffy. While standing near the top of the goal box, Harris kicked a low shot into the corner of the net.
The goal cut the Manor lead in half and seemed to give the Lady Blue Devils some momentum.
But Manor answered with a goal a few minutes later. At 25:00, Colleen Casey beat Brock with a low shot to boost the Lady Wildcats’ advantage to 5-2.
Eight minutes into the second half, Manor’s Dana Manell scored the final goal of the afternoon. A shot by teammate Jackie Trotti bounced off the goal post and Manell tracked the ball down and quickly kicked it into the net.
Roscoe had a few chances to score in the second half, but was unable to do so. Perhaps the Lady Blue Devils’ best opportunity came shortly after Manell’s goal. From about 20 yards away, Duffy kicked the ball towards the goal cage. But the ball bounced off of the crossbar and flew out of bounds.
All of the other Roscoe second-half shots were stopped by Manor goalie Bionca Colton.
Colton finished the match with 21 saves, while Brock recorded 19 saves.
Roscoe Coach Kevin Sanford noted that the first few minutes of the match made all the difference.
“If you take away the first five minutes, the score probably would have ended up being 3 to 2,” Sanford said.
Despite the loss, Sanford found some positives in the contest.
“Even though we lost, we played some of the best soccer we have all season,” he commented. “After the first few minutes we settled down and played a lot better.”
Manor Coach Shirlee Davis concurred with Sanford about the early goals being the difference in the match.
“That was nice,” Davis said of the early tallies. “Tiffany Parker was able to take advantage of her speed and score those goals.”
“And it was nice to get all of my players into the game,” Davis added. “In the second half, a lot of our younger and less experienced players got a chance to play.”