Girls Varsity Soccer Knocks Out League Champs Hills West: #8 seed beats #1 seed
Towards the end of a tough losing streak, Harborfields Girls’ Soccer was starting to doubt if they would make it to playoffs. At the end of the regular season, they pulled together a 6 game winning streak which secured them a number 8 spot in the 10 teams that were accepted into playoffs. In other words, they battled to just get into the playoff tournament. Hills West had a 13-1 record, only losing one game to West Babylon. They were the number one seed, league champs, and set to win counties.
Showing up to the Half Hallow Hills East field, Hills was confident this would be an easy win; since they had already defeated Harborfields 3-0 in the regular season. Harborfields’ strategy was to overload the defense and play 5 in the back, instead of the usual 4. The starting back line, (Taylor Sammis, Sophia Ruisi, Petra Brown, Melissa Neder, and Brooke Buda) faced the league’s best offensive line in the league including Indiana women’s soccer commit, Jordan Levy, and Binghampton women’s soccer commit, Carly Bloom.
In the first half, Katie Davis scored with an upper corner shot from just inside the 18; Putting the score 1-0.
At half-time, Hills still seemed confident that they would pull off the win. Several minutes after the first half Carly Bloom dribbled through the middle and scored a well placed shot, making the score 1-1.
Harborfields was disappointed, but didn’t lose hope. Towards the middle of the second half, Taylor Sammis took a free kick from outside the 18, in which she crossed and Katie Davis scored again.
With the score at 2-1 with about 15 minutes left, the Harborfields defense faced immense pressure. With many lucky saves, Harborfields prevented Hills from scoring and walked away with a 2-1 win and a new confidence for the rest of the tournament. Gracie Heil says, “I knew we could pull it off, we put so much work and heart into that game, and they underestimated us, which ultimately helped us walk away with the win”.
Harborfields Girls Soccer will face ESM 9 (away) on Thursday October 31, at 2:00 in the semi-finals.