Hand Girls’ Soccer Loses on PKs in States
For the second-straight season, the Hand girls’ soccer team was eliminated in the first round of the Class L State Tournament, although the Tigers showed plenty of pride by going down swinging, while taking their opponent to the limit.
No. 17 seed Hand traveled to a fellow SCC club in 16th-seeded Sacred Heart Academy for a Class L matchup on Nov. 9. The Tigers grabbed a 1-0 halftime lead before SHA netted the equalizer in the second half. After the sides played to a 1-1 tie following two regulation periods and a pair of overtimes, the game was decided by penalty kicks with the Pacers outscoring Hand 4-3 in that session for a 2-1 victory.
“I told them after the game that with this year and last year, honestly, the better team in the game doesn’t always win it when it comes down to PKs. You can play a great game and the other team can defend well and have a hot goaltender,” said Head Coach David Dikranian, whose team went 9-6-4 in his second year at the helm. “I’ve been on both sides of it when it is decided by PKs where the better team does win and also when it doesn’t win. Yet the girls played beautifully and were the better team.”
In a contest that saw 44 shots on goal, Hand took ownership of 27 strikes and SHA countered with 17. Tigers’ senior goalkeeper Amy Boswell made 13 saves, while her counterpart in Alexa Fiala notched 24.
“I would like to see the teams keep playing overtimes. I remember years ago, you would do two overtimes, then the golden goal [a sudden victory goal that determines the winner] before they went to kicks. But it’s tough, especially at this level of the game with a lot of pressure,” Dikranian said. “Again, I would like to see it keep continuing with overtimes, but I know they don’t want the games to go forever. We practice penalty kicks in practice and they hit them, but in a game, you never know what happens.”
Hand took the initial 1-0 lead at the 23:10 mark of the game when sophomore Sophie Cohen found the back of the net. Classmate Gabby Egidio penetrated in from outside the 18-yard line and passed the ball to Cohen, who shot it home from the far corner.
The Pacers (9-5-4) then snuck in the tying goal 10:54 into the second half as Isabella Blackwell took advantage of a misjudged over-the-top ball in the Hand defensive backfield and raced in on a breakaway to make it a 1-all game. From there, the Tigers maintained the majority of possession and even had a look at a potential game-winning tally on a corner kick that went off a SHA defender. Hand then had another shot boom off the Pacers’ post in the first overtime.
For Hand in the penalty kicks period, sophomore Viviana Mazzarella, senior Gillian Kraemer, and junior Nicole Luongo struck the ball behind Fiala in the SHA net. However, the Pacers powered their trio of strikes past Boswell to even things up. Megan Jerram then stepped up and scored to send SHA to the second round.
“Honestly, the girls played really well and controlled most of the possession in the first half and we also outplayed them for most of the second,” said Dikranian. “It was just that they hit all of their PKs and we missed one of ours. We outplayed them for sure. It was just one of those games where we didn’t finish. We practice PKs all the time and it was unfortunate we didn’t get the result we wanted, but the girls were still positive.”
The defeat wraps up what was still successful campaign for the Tigers, who sealed a SCC Tournament bid as the No. 6 seed and upset No. 3 Amity 2-0 on the road for the quarterfinals before hanging tight with eventual runner-up Lauralton Hall in a 2-1 semifinal loss. Coach Dikranian said his squad grasped some solid offensive fundamentals this fall that could pave the way for an even deeper playoff push in 2016.
“We made great strides in terms of long-term goals for the program. We want to be competitive, but we also wanted to establish a certain offensive style that could maybe take two [to] four years sometimes. I thought they did a good job in playing a possession-based, composed-ball game and they got better with that every game,” said Dikranian. “I thought about six games in, we did a really good job with checking our assignments on defense and with our combo plays. We could’ve won more games, but our record was close with what I expected. We played Guilford very well this year; we played a near-perfect game against Amity, who I thought was the best team in the conference; and it was anybody’s game against Lauralton. We have a lot of returning players as well, so we are building something special here.”
From the Sidelines
In the first round of last year’s Class L State Tournament, Hand was also the No. 16 seed and took a 2-1 loss to No. 17 New Canaan on penalty kicks by a 4-2 margin.
This was the only meeting between Hand and Sacred Heart Academy for the 2015 season.
In their second round game, the Pacers were shut out 6-0 by top-seeded St. Joseph.
This year marked the Tigers’ first SCC Tournament appearance and victory since 2012.