Home
Field Hockey: Watterson 2, St. Ursula Academy 1
Nov 07, 2009
The Watterson High School field hockey team rallied from a one-goal halftime deficit to beat Cincinnati St. Ursula Academy 2-1 in a state semifinal last Friday at Upper Arlington.
The Eagles improved to 17-2-1 and will face Columbus Academy in the final Saturday at UA. The Bulldogs finished 12-7-1.
Watterson coach Janet Baird was pleased with the way her squad responded after Ellen Frank scored midway through the first half to give the Bulldogs a 1-0 lead.
It was only the fourth time the Eagles have trailed this year, and they went 1-2 in the other contests they had fallen behind in.
"Our theme for this year is 'fight back' because we didn't do that last year, and our kids made up their minds that they were going to fight back in this game," Baird said. "They scored a fluky goal where our defense didn't do a good job of clearing (the rebound) off our goalkeeper's pads, but our kids never gave up. They kept playing hard until the last tick of the clock, and I think our depth wore them down in the second half, because we play a lot of girls."
Sarah Vlahakis received a pass from Abby Barker and backhanded a shot past goalie Ellen Ryan to tie the score with 28 minutes, 11 seconds left.
"The ball came in from the side and bounced up, so I reverse-flicked it in," Vlahakis said. "We were so excited and relieved to get a goal, because we're not used to having to play from behind like that."
The Eagles took the lead on a penalty corner opportunity with 16:09 left, after Maria Swartz fired a shot off Ryan's pads and Nina Passen banked in the rebound.
"My role on that play is to get to the goalie for the rebound, and the ball rolled right in front of me," Passen said.
The Eagles had nine penalty corner chances, while St. Ursula had four penalty corners.
Watterson goalkeeper Domini Paradiso finished with four saves and Ryan had six saves.
Copyright 2009
Powered By Zebra Mobile
