In recent post-season rounds, the Jamesville-DeWitt girls soccer team had made a habit out of scoring early goals. But the Red Rams took that practice to a new level during the first half of Tuesday night’s Class A regional playoff game against Section II champion Scotia-Glenville at Fulton.
Whether it was the happiness of seeing a new regional opponent, or just the disparate pieces of an exciting attack all clicking together at the same time, the Red Rams delivered an unforgettable 40 minutes that produced six goals and buried the Tartans’ chances, leading to an eventual 6-0 victory.
Just the fact that it was Scotia-Glenville on the other side was novel enough. Each of the previous five years J-D had won a Section III Class A title, it had to go against Burnt Hills-Ballston Lake, leading to four defeats, the only victory coming in 2012 on this same Fulton turf.
But the Spartans had finally lost in the Section II final, 4-2, to Scotia-Glenvillle last Saturday night, leaving the Red Rams, for once, as the more experienced side in state tournament action – which it quickly demonstrated against a shell-shocked group of Tartans.
Fans were barely in their seats when, less than three minutes into the game, Alex Catanzarite dribbled and sped through Scotia’s defenses and got on the board with her team’s first goal.
In the first eight minutes, the Rams peppered the Tartans with seven shots, barely missing on a few of them before Amber Hyatt took a throw-in from the side and put home the second goal.
And that wasn’t even the devastating part. In a span of three minutes, 36 seconds late in the half, Ali Durkin, Alex Epifani and Paige Sherling all took turns putting in goals, stretching the margin to 5-0 as Catanzarite assisted on two of those scoring plays.
To cap off this devastation, Caroline Kopp found her way around four Scotia defenders before hitting for her second goal in as many games, becoming the sixth different J-D player to find the net – and all of it done before halftime.
All that was left to see was whether J-D would add to its margin, or whether the Tartans would salvage some pride with a late goal. Neither thing happened.
So J-D now heads to the Class A regional final Saturday at Ogdensburg Free Academy, where it will face Massena (Section X), needing just one more win to get to next weekend’s state final four in the Cortland-Homer area.
