Westfield had high hopes going into their Senior Day. With an excited huddle before the game and an intense warmup, they were locked in and ready to compete. The moment the opening kickoff happened everyone in the stadium could tell tensions were high. Early on Westfield’s head coach Eric Shaw believed that there were a few calls that should have gone their way and that there were a lot of “stupid calls on both sides of the ball.”
With a passionate defensive battle, no team seemed to be in control of the game. The two teams would trade possession of the ball, going back and forth on their opportunities with a handful of missed shots and valuable saves from both teams.
Senior captain Ethan Wade believed that the cornerstone to the Blue Devils’ suffocating defense was “talking with one another, and truly having faith with one another. If we execute that properly it is rare that a goal will get past us.”
This proved to be true as throughout the first half the brick wall that was the Blue Devil defense stood tall.
Westfield was able to use this to be more aggressive on offense until senior Daniel DeSousa was able to find the back of the net with less than 20 minutes left in the first half. DeSousa’s first shot attempt was deflected, but the rebound landed right in front of his striking leg for another shot.
DeSousa said, “We were really trying to be aggressive at that stage in the game, and I kept getting the ball in the box and I kept shooting it and eventually it went in.”
After this goal, more of the same defensive intensity followed for the remainder of the first half. Neither team was able to find any decent shot opportunities and both teams entered their locker rooms at the half with the scoreboard reading 1-0.
Coming into the second half, Westfield was aiming to uphold their ferocious defense to the best of their ability and not let up any more goal opportunities. They succeeded until the last four minutes. With excessive ball movement, Monroe’s ball movement was able to split the seemingly impenetrable Blue devil defense. Monroe attacker Christopher Duran found a hole, tying up the game just in time.
Heading into overtime the Blue Devils were unable to convert offensive opportunities they created for themselves into goals, and the game ended in a 1-1 tie.
After the game, Shaw was “disappointed” in the way overtime played out because he felt as though they had a lot of chances to win, but the stars would not align.
The Blue Devils hope to bounce back with a challenging week ahead of them starting off with North Brunswick at 4 p.m. on Tuesday.
