Possession soccer works best when you can provide the exclamation point.
The Ridgeland High School girls soccer team”s ability to turn its pressure into goals is one reason why the program has won five state titles in the past six years.
Ridgeland showed championship-caliber finishing skills Saturday, using beautifully placed shots by Mary Ashton Lembo and Sloan Bancroft to fight off a pesky New Hope team 4-2 in a Mississippi High School Activities Association Class 5A second-round playoff game at Trojans Field.
Ridgeland (18-1-3), the defending Class 5A champion, will advance to play the winner of Saturday”s Pearl-Saltillo match on Tuesday for the right to play for the state title.
New Hope (13-4) saw the best season its program”s history end despite a feisty performance. A year ago, Ridgeland defeated New Hope 6-0 in the playoffs. This year, the Lady Trojans weren”t intimidated. Even though they played more of a defensive game in an attempt to contain the more skilled and speedy Lady Titans, they converted their two best scoring chances and didn”t give in.
“We have come a long way,” New Hope senior goalkeeper Brandi Brantley said. “We have earned to pass the ball, to dribble with our heads up, to control it, to touch the ball. We started where we left off last year, so we were way ahead of last year.”
New Hope played the final 24 minutes of the first half without forward Effie Morrison. Morrison scored the game-winning goal Wednesday in a 3-2 overtime victory against Oxford. Against Ridgeland, she went down clutching her shoulder after pursuing a ball to the endline. She returned to the stands late in the first half (with an arm in a sling and a bag of ice on her shoulder) too late to see her teammate tie the game at 1. Demi Menotti nearly headed home a free kick, but a defender cleared it off the line. The ball deflected to the right of the defender to Farris Bradley, who knocked the ball off goalkeeper Haley Hegwood to set off a celebration.
The goal helped erase the sting of an own goal that came after Kayla Smith didn”t hear Brantley come off her line and call for the ball. Smith tried to clear it, only to have it squib off her foot just inside the far post.
If Ridgeland was lucky to get the first goal, it earned the next two. Lembo”s goal came one minute before halftime. The sophomore midfielder carried the ball to her right and chipped it from 25 to 30 yards out. The well-touched ball sailed over the head of Brantley.
Ridgeland made it 3-1 on an even better goal. Bancroft positioned herself 25 yards from goal near the left sideline and delivered a free kick that sailed over Brantley”s head into the upper corner, just inside the far post.
Ridgeland coach Craig Winship said his team works a ton on keeping possession, moving and controlling the ball, and finishing its chances. He was pleased with how the Lady Titans moved the ball and pressured the Lady Trojans for nearly the entire match.
“I was proud of the way the girls relaxed and got into their rhythm,” Winship said.
Winship also credited New Hope for its performance. He said he anticipated the Lady Trojans would try to pack it in, but their level of play improved and they were more tenacious.
“Last year, they got behind early and once they got behind it just built and built and built,” Winship said. “The girls kept their heads up and stayed in it until the very end. I can tell Mary has them working and they have the attitude going that they believe they are in every game, and they were.”
New Hope answered with a little less than 13 minutes to play. Morrison, who re-entered the game with 31 minutes remaining, slid the ball to the middle, where Maria Bergdal showed some precision marksmanship of her own, driving a right-footed shot into the upper right corner.
The Lady Trojans attempted to press forward to tie the game, but the Lady Titans capitalized on that aggressiveness when Shannon Locke cleaned up after goalkeeper Anna Holley, who had pushed up and was well off her line couldn”t make contact with a loose ball to send it back over midfield.
The final goal did little to ruin the positive energy New Hope felt from its effort.
New Hope coach Mary Nagy saw her team was nervous before the game, so she told her the team the story of her hometown team, the New Orleans Saints. The Saints were once the laughingstock of the NFL. It was so bad their fans wore bags over their heads at home games to watch the ”Aints.
Last season, though, New Orleans ended years of frustration by winning the Super Bowl.
Nagy hoped her players realized they, too, could do the improbable and beat the heavily favored champion. And while the Lady Trojans came up short, Nagy couldn”t have been prouder of her players.
“You could see them relax after the first couple of minutes when no one scored,” Nagy said. “Gradually, they came together. We had to play a little bit defensive. I didn”t want to, but they were very fast up top and they are a great team.
“But my girls stuck with them, even with all of our youth. They are carrying a team with three or four seniors and eight or nine juniors. I have mostly middle schoolers out there and ninth-graders. They just didn”t quit.”
Nagy was sad to see senior captains Brantley and Holley play their last games, but she credited them for being part of the program”s emergence. She said the growth in the program the past two seasons bodes well for the future.
“We”re not done,” Nagy said. “In a couple of weeks, tryouts star again and our season begins. We”re going to have the leadership Anna and Brandi provided for us. We won”t forget that because they always will be a part of this year.”
Brantley said the Lady Trojans weren”t intimidated by the fact Ridgeland won state titles in Class 4A from 2005-08 and last year. She knows next season”s New Hope team will start from where it left off Saturday and should be primed for even bigger things in 2011-12.
“They are going to take another step up,” Brantley said. “I can see them maybe going to state next year. They have a lot of young players, so this team has a lot of growing up to do, but they”re maturing as they go and they”re getting really good. They”re maturing in the right ways. I think next year is going to be a positive season for them.”
Adam Minichino is the former Sports Editor for The Commercial Dispatch.
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