Cinderella season ends at consolation ball

Posted by admin on Nov 21, 2006 in Sports | 0 comments

VICTORIA (CUP)—The Cinderella season of the Spartans women’s soccer team came back down to earth with the team finishing in fifth place at the CIS women’s soccer nationals in Victoria.

The Spartans opened the tourney with a heartbreaking 1-0 loss to York University in extra time on Nov. 9. That matched the team up against the weaker Cape Breton in their consolation match Nov. 10.

Botched defensive efforts by the Cape Breton Capers and an overpowering offensive effort by Trinity Western University led the Spartans to winning handily.

A slow game at first, both teams felt out their competition in an attempt to gain some ground. Yet, TWU’s Dana DuMerton opened the scoring a mere 13 minutes in with a weak shot from the right side. Capers keeper Jessica MacDermid got a piece of DuMerton’s shot, but not enough to stop it from dribbling across the line just inside the left post.

The match went dead at that point, as both sides dug themselves in until a flurry of goals in the second half. The Spartan’s Carlee O’Brien and Katie Smart netted a pair six minutes apart (54th and 60th minutes, respectively), while Kelli Anne McCabe added another in the 84th, ending the game with a 4-0 score.

“To be able to jump on the field and help the team feels awesome,” said Smart, a substitute, after her thundering shot went in from 50 feet out. “It feels great to get out there and play at the nationals.”

Despite the result, Capers coach Ness Timmons was proud of his team’s effort. “I think they played for 90 minutes and they finished the game hard,” he said.

The Spartan victory set up the fifth-place match Sunday, against Quebec champions McGill, whom University of British Columbia knocked out in their opening match. Under a barrage of freezing rain, the women squeezed a 1-0 victory over the McGill Martlets, despite spending most of the game on the defensive.

The first half was slow as the girls tried to play the chill out of their bones. McGill kept the ball on the Spartans’ end for the better part of the half, but couldn’t manage many shots on net. At the 44-minute mark, Spartan Lindsay Rohla crossed the ball over to Melanie Ingwersen just seconds after clearing half. Ingwersen then scored the game’s only goal on McGill keeper Victoria Villalba, who was too far out to secure the save after Ingwersen niftily stepped past her.

In the second half, Carlee O’Brien picked up several breakaways, but was unable to capitalize on them. The Spartans stepped up the pace to put more pressure on McGill, but the rest of the game was a stalemate. High tensions led to each team receiving a yellow card.

Spartans coach Graham Roxburgh was pleased with the team’s performance.
“It’s always hard to play for placing at a tournament when you know you can’t win a medal,” says Roxburgh. “We struggled early on to play with the kind of passion that I expect from our team, but as the game wore on, we kind of woke up and were very good for the last 60 minutes.”