Harmony girls play on, 3-1

Home

Soccer

Other Sun Publications

FREE DELIVERY!
Get Free Delivery! Request your Osceola News Gazette Today.

Login Form

2013 Summertime Fun

Osceola Hurricane Handbook 2013

2013 Sexual Predator Sexual Offender List sexualpredatorcover13

Windows on the Classroom June 2013

School Calendar
2012-2013

View our other Special Sections

Harmony girls play on, 3-1

Sports

Wednesday, 25 January 2012 14:28

News-Gazette Photo/Andrew Sullivan

Harmony’s Caitlin Beam (3) pushes the ball upfield as Osceola’s Emily Trejos pursues during a game earlier this month.

Beam, Ward score to help Horns advance to regional semifinals

By Ken Jackson
For the News-Gazette
It took about an hour of soccer to sort out Tuesday’s Region 2 quarterfinal at Harmony High School, but the ending had a familiar feel to the Longhorns.

Harmony (15-3-1), playing for a return trip to the Class 4A state tournament, outlasted Winter Springs (15-6-2), 3-1, to keep that dream alive.
Kaley Ward and Caitlin Beam’s second half goals seven minutes apart snapped a 1-1 second-half tie and send the Longhorns on to Friday’s regional semifinal. Harmony hits the road to play District 5 champion Daytona Beach Seabreeze, who downed Osceola, 8-0, on Tuesday.
Harmony Coach Stephanie Jones graduated seven seniors off that team that went to state last year, and Winter Springs represented a team of unknown talent, so she admitted she didn’t know what to expect going into Tuesday.
“We spent this season as a chance for new leaders to step up and emerge knowing we’d need them for this kind of game, she said. “This week we talked about four things: determination, resolve, heart and joy, and our girls tied them all together tonight.
“They wanted it. There were a couple of lapses, and we’ve had a hard time regrouping sometimes after giving up a goal, but they left it all out there, and after the game they knew it.”
The Longhorns struck first, 23 minutes into the game, when Sage Leffew got the Bears’ goalie Nicole Rotger out of position challenging for the ball, which squirted sideways to Beam, who shot into an open net. But instead of settling into the game with a lead and being able to dictate the pace, Winter Springs answered with a score seven minutes later, when Alexandria Jones shot a loose ball in the net from point-blank range.
The Bears kept up the pressure the rest of the half, and continued it to start the second half. But after subtle halftime adjustments, the Longhorns’ defensive line of Alexis Plattner, Heidi Mobley, Tricia May and sweeper Kendall Pollock kept turning them away and creating opportunities for the offense.
Beam couldn’t convert the first of those, when she broke in alone on Rotger, who stopped the one-on-one shot. But Harmony kept plugging away; Ward picked up a loose ball near the midfield stripe and dribbled around and through three defenders before burying a shot into the left corner to put the Longhorns up, 2-1, in the 66th minute.
“I started going, then I thought I saw someone in the corner of my eye, but then I looked up and only saw the keeper so I just went,” Ward said of her team-leading 39th goal.
Harmony showed no jitters playing with a one-goal lead. In fact, they widened it when Beam beat her defender and fired a shot that Rotger got a fingertip on, but it found the back of the net for an all-important insurance goal, her 29th this year.
“This game was harder than we thought,” Beam, one of just two starting seniors, said. “But we just showed more focus when there was more pressure. The whole team played a great game.”
Ward agreed.
“The offense played great, the defense played great, especially Kendall (Pollock),” she said. “We felt really good. We know that we can prove ourselves after all those good players graduated.”
What was Pollock’s assessment, after chasing Bears attackers around for 80 minutes and keeping the ball out of her end of the field?
“I’m really tired,” she said, slowly walking out of the stadium with ice affixed to her in two places.
She has until Friday to feel better. Should Harmony win in Daytona Beach, the road to the state tournament at the University of South Florida gets really tough. George Jenkins and Steinbrenner, a Class 5A regional finalist and the defending 4A state champ, meet Friday in the other Region 2 semifinal. The Longhorns lost, 1-0, to Steinbrenner in last year’s state semifinal.
Should Harmony advance past Seabreeze, it would host the regional final, one step from the state tournament.
Jones says her team knows of, and expects, the challenge ahead.
“Everyone knew coming in this season would be harder, teams would be coming for us and we’d have younger players looking up at the bar set last year,” she said. “So we’ve worked harder, in practice and during the season. I tell them if we play that way, the hard part of it will be well worth it.”
Osceola Coach Mark Ausherman saw his team finish its season at 12-4, but the last two outings were no fun: losses of 6-0 to Harmony last week for the district championship, and 8-0 to Seabreeze.
“We could have done better,” he said.
OHS goalie Courtney Ausherman had a hectic night, turning away 22 of 30 shots.