Mount Greylock Girls Fall in Penalty Kicks
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. -- Gardner’s Maddy Lashua spent most of the afternoon keeping the ball out of the net.
She finished it -- and Mount Greylock’s season -- by putting the ball in the net.
The Gardner senior keeper converted in the fifth round to give her team a 4-3 penalty kick shootout win that advanced Gardner to the Sweet 16 of the Division 5 State Tournament on Saturday afternoon.
Lashua also stopped the first and fifth penalty kicks from the Mounties to put herself in position to end the shootout needed to settle a match tied, 1-1, after 100 minutes of play.
“Big moments,” Gardner coach Pete Gamache said. “Big moments for her. She’ll remember that forever, and so will I.”
The win sends 23rd-seeded Gardner to the octofinals, where it will head to No. 7 Tahanto Regional, an 8-0 winner over McCann Tech on Saturday afternoon.
Gardner had a two-week layoff between its Central Massachusetts games and Thursday’s 8-0 play-in round victory, Gamache said.
A fair helping of that extra practice time went into preparation for sports’ most frustrating tie-breaker.
“Every practice, the end of practice, we have our 10 girls who we know we might possibly kick when we get to that point,” he said. “The goalkeeper is a senior. She knew she was going to be the fifth kicker no matter what happened.
“All that work, every single day for the last 14 days, taking PKs, trying to get in the right frame of mind for that moment. Their goalie made a great save on Becca’s. Becca [Cormier] made a great strike, and she made a great save. But we were locked and loaded. I felt confident going into those.”
Emma Newberry, who made three saves in regular play for the Mounties, made a huge save in the fourth round of PKs to even the shootout.
But Lashua (17 saves) made the plays of the match back-to-back, a diving save to her right to keep it 3-3 going into her kick to clinch the game.
For the Mounties, who got goals from Livia Morales, Molly Sulliva n and Lucy Igoe during the shootout, the real frustration was that the match got to that point.
“We should have gotten it done in 100 minutes of regular soccer, and we didn’t,” Mount Greylock coach Tom Ostheimer said. “We had our chances, and we needed to be better than that one corner kick by Livia.
“I thought we had the better of play. We just didn’t capitalize.”
Livia Morales gave the Mounties a jolt and a 1-0 lead in the 10th minute when she converted a corner kick from the right wing with a beautiful arcing shot that curved over Lashua’s outstretched arms and into the net.
From there, Mount Greylock earned a 12-4 edge in shots on goal over the rest of regulation.
Gardner did have a couple of good chances in the first half, but one apparent goal was called back for an offsides, and Newberry stoned Yessica Duran on a counter in the 36th minute to keep it a 1-0 game going into half-time.
In the intermission, Mount Greylock talked about wanting to seize offensive opportunities and put pressure on Gardner rather than waiting on the extra pass, and it did generate more shots on goal in the goal -- eight -- in the second half.
“We did and we didn’t [improve from the first half],” Ostheimer said. “I think we still took a little too long on some shots. I think sometimes it was one pass too many. We had a bunch of scrambles, especially in the last few minutes, a bunch of scrambles in the box that we just couldn’t convert on.
“We had some open looks, and we just didn’t capitalize. And that’s been a struggle this season.”
Lydia Leblanc converted one of the few open looks for Gardner midway through the second half, coming into the box from deep on the right wing and putting a shot past Newberry to level the score.
And that is where it ended after 80 minutes.
The Mounties, who played their third straight overtime game in the post-season, had most of the good chances in the extra sessions, including five shots on Lashua in the first 10-minute OT.
But Gardner’s defense held up and got the team to the shootout.
“We just want to be physical and want to make it difficult for teams that might have more skills than us,” Gamache said. “We want to make it difficult for them to do what they want to do.
“I feel like both teams were gassed out there for the last 30 minutes or so of playing time, where it was pretty ugly banging each other a little bit. … It’s not pretty soccer to watch, but it’s fun to watch the girls do everything they can on both sides to get a win. And I think both teams can be proud.”