A whole year had passed since the Jamesville-DeWitt girls soccer team’s first quest for a state championship got stopped in a heart-wrenching penalty-kick shoot-out loss to Section II champion Burnt Hills-Ballston Lake.
So the Red Rams were quite eager to meet the Spartans again Tuesday night in a Class A regional rematch at West Genesee High School – but it had the same sad ending, this time without the need for penalty kicks.
J-D lost, 2-0, to Burnt Hills, unable to do anything against a big, physical Spartan defense while, on its own end, two ill-timed mistakes translated into goals that accounted for the final margin.
“We played hard and did some good stuff,” said head coach Hayley Nies. “But we just didn’t put anything in.”
Indeed, a large part of the story was the way J-D’s high-powered offense bogged down, a stark contrast to the 6-1 drubbing it put on Whitesboro in the Section III Class A title game four nights earlier.
Burnt Hills’ four-player back line, composing of Brianne Hadcock, Nicole Shively, Sarah Glowa and Kaita Albanese, stayed in place for most of the night, closing off the areas through which J-D stars Tessa Devereaux and Jessica Holmes would normally roam. And even when shots were taken, Spartans goalkeeper Florie Comley calmly handled them on her way to 10 saves.
The visitor’s cause was helped even more when, just 8:15 into the game, J-D goalie Emma Esposito could not hold on to a crossing attempt from Bryony Striffler, allowing Morgan Burchardt to push the ball into the open net to give Burnt Hills a 1-0 lead.
Though the Rams controlled the flow of play in the late stages of the first half and much of the second half, it could not pull even. Still, the chance to tie was there going into the late stages as the Spartans’ defense tightened even further.
Then, with 6:31 to play, Burnt Hills attacked down the right side and fed a ball to the middle. Esposito ran into one of her own defenders and the ball went loose long enough for Burnt Hills’ Skye Kaler to swoop in and shoot it into the open net, clinching the Spartans’ trip to the regional finals.
J-D finished with a mark of 16-3. It will see just five seniors depart, though it includes Esposito, defenders Rene Keller and Taryn Dausman, and midfielders Emily Nuss and Ally Loewy. But with Holmes, Tessa Devereaux, Maddy Devereaux, Stephanie Mannion, Emily Elbers and Jenna Hayward among a large returning class for 2011, the Rams can easily ponder a third consecutive sectional championship – and perhaps, much more.