Behind a goal and two assists (four points) from junior Lucy Arps, No. 2 Chatham High School (New Jersey) Girl’s soccer team downed seventh-seeded Madison, its cross-town rivals, 3-1, in the quarterfinals of the Morris County Tournament (MCT) Wednesday afternoon at Hass Field.
Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to subscribe!But there was a play that almost ripped the momentum from the Cougars’ collective gut.
With Chatham (10-3-2) leading 1-0 with 20 seconds left in the first half, Madison received a late corner kick call, instead of a goal kick, per head coach Anthony Correale. The Cougars scrambled to get into position before the kick, but they did not. That is when the Dodgers (9-3-1) scored with 0.03 left in the half to tie it up at 1-1.
“I told them, ‘Listen, these things happen in soccer. It’s just how you react to it. You can go out in the second half, and you can put your heads down and you can be upset about it. But you knew, in the first half, that you were playing one of the better teams. Now, you have to go out and forget about it.”‘ Correale said to his team at halftime. “I also told that even though it (the goal) happened, we didn’t do the little things. We didn’t transition the way we needed to. ‘Shake it off, let it go, pretend it didn’t happen. Go out there. It’s another half, tie game. It’s like the game just started. Go out there and play.”‘
And they did. After applying pressure on Madison’s defense, Arps found senior Grace Powers for the go-ahead, 2-1marker with 27:47 remaining in the second half.
Next, it was Arps, who finessed the ball into the net for a 3-1 advantage with 20:31 left in the match. Junior Grace Chellakumar assisted on the goal.
Almost taking the air of the club after the Dodgers’ late first half goal, Arps said Correale’s pep talk gave them a measure of motivation that helped redirect toward a big victory.
“It definitely was a little bit of a letdown. I felt it kind of hit us a little bit harder, especially since it was the end of the first half,” Arps, a UPenn commit, said. “We really weren’t expecting that with the last 20 seconds. But, when something like that happens, you kind of just have to let it go and move on. We have a whole 40 minutes and got to put it behind us. Coach Anthony did a real job of reassuring us that we just have to move on. And we came out and played with a lot of intensity. “
From there, Chatham’s defense went into lockdown mode the rest of the way to help it advance to the MCT semifinals against No. 3 Montville Saturday, with place and time to be determined.
Senior Molly Haid tallied the Cougars’ first score in the first half.
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