One minute left. The scoreboard, eclipsing the setting sun, gleamed 2-2. Knees weak and palms sweaty, Westfield focused in. 59 long minutes of hard play all came down to this. Glen Ridge lined up for a corner. The ball was passed to the outside left. One more pass. A shot. Senior goalkeeper Maddie Caherly flew across the goal to make the save. The ball rebounded off of her pads out of bounds then bounced back in off of the tire on the side of the goal where she stopped it, assuming the play to be over. Across the field, the referee blew her whistle. A stroke penalty for trapping the ball. The referee never saw the ball roll out of bounds. Glen Ridge would be granted a stroke, a free shot against only the goalkeeper. They would send it in to go up 3-2 with only 30 seconds left. Westfield was not able to make a miracle happen, and they went on to lose by one goal.
“It was a very unfair call that changed the outcome of the game,” said sophomore Maren Restivo. “Maybe if there were 2 or 3 minutes left, we could have really pulled through, but with 30 seconds left there’s not much we can do.”
What was supposed to be an exciting Senior Day for the Blue Devils turned into anger and disappointment. Head coach Corinne Varhley said, “If you’re going to make a call like that with 35 seconds left in your game, you better be sure. Unfortunately, she made the wrong call.”
What made the loss all the more disappointing was the fact that Westfield played a fantastic game on both sides of the field.
Starting off shaky, the Blue Devil defense let up a goal in the first two minutes of the match. The ball then stayed in the Westfield defensive end for most of the quarter except for an unsuccessful corner from the Blue Devils with three minutes left. Two minutes later, Glen Ridge’s second goal came off of a corner.
The second quarter began Westfield’s three quarters of dominant play. Westfield controlled the ball for the majority of the remaining time before half. With about five minutes left, sophomore Riley Carr lined up for a corner, passing it in to junior Emma Blake. Blake’s cross was blocked out of bounds. Given another corner, Carr was denied again. Though not able to connect for a score before half, the defense stood formidably in the midfield, not allowing Glen Ridge across.
This strong defense continued into the second half. It started out slow, mostly thanks to the efforts of seniors Erin Doherty and Katie Walsh and junior Abi Mokrzycki, stopping the Ridgers in their tracks time and time again. Doherty said that after coming off of a few hard losses, the defense in practice focused on “channeling [the ball] to the sideline and really just trying to not let it get to our goalie because we want to trust each other.” The trust and chemistry on the defensive side was clear today.
With four minutes left, a clear from Doherty sent the ball to Glen Ridge’s half. After multiple passes and a number of battles for the ball, Restivo was able to pluck the ball out of defenders’ grasps and hit it into the back of the net from short range. 2-1. Cheers erupted from the stands and the sideline, although they knew the game was nowhere near finished.
This goal was what the team needed after standing strong on defense for so long. Restivo said, “I think our energy really upped when we came back. We fought, we played our own game and we wanted it. So we went for it.”
The energy was there. Glen Ridge tried to respond quickly, holding the ball on offense for a few minutes. They could not get past Westfield’s impenetrable defense. The Blue Devils cleared it to end the quarter.
One minute into the final quarter of the match, sophomore Emma Schwarzenbek passed the ball in bounds from the right corner. A series of passes and rebounded shots brought the ball right back to where the Blue Devils wanted it: in Restivo’s control, only a few feet from the left side of the goal. She sent it in for her second of the game, tying it at 2-2 and completing the hard-fought, multi-quarter comeback.
“You really, really saw a different team. You really saw that they wanted to come back in this game,” said Varhley. Her perspective of Westfield’s game plan and exceptional execution in the second half went as such: “It’s all about small changes: cutting in front of the ball, spacing, not occupying the same space and overloading and just working together. I think that in the second half there was a fire lit under them, and they had the momentum the entire half.”
The Blue Devils’ defense would stand tall until the final minute when their defeat would come about from something beyond their control.
Though a heartbreaking way to lose, especially on Senior Day, the Blue Devils walked off not dejected but with fire in their gut. Doherty said, “this is the game that’s really just gonna piss us off and motivate us for the rest of the season.”
The girls will look to rebound from their tough loss and get their second win of the season this Friday at 4 p.m. against Cranford at home.
