Health & Fitness
CRHS SOCCER: Girls Face Tough Competition. Boys Plagued by Injury.
Girls lose 2 of 3, Boys struggle with sickness and injuries.
GIRLS SOCCER
The CRHS girls had 3 games last week against some very good teams. Monday was a battle of unbeaten teams. Coginchaug was 6-0, and East Hampton was 6-0-1. The first half was an evenly matched game with both teams putting on a full effort and playing well on both sides of the ball. Unfortunately East Hampton struck first. Coginchaug Goal Keeper Kara Mather made a diving save but an alert East Hampton player was there to knock in the rebound for the only goal of the first half. Whatever adjustments Coach Kavanaugh made at half, they seemed to be the right ones. The Lady Devils barely ever let the ball out of their offensive half of the field for the entire remainder of the game. Just over 20 minutes into the period, CRHS evened the score. After a series of short passes, the ball came to Senior Captain Victoria Buonanni. A few quick touches to make a little space for herself, and then she sent a impressive 25 yard shot just under the crossbar and out of the reach of the keeper. The score was tied, and it seemed that Coginchaug had the momentum. Unfortunately in soccer, sometimes the better team doesn’t win. With less than 8 minutes to go, the Bellringers controlled the ball into their attacking third for only the fourth time in the half. They took full advantage of the opportunity and made a pretty play that resulted in the game winning goal.
The girls looked to avenge their loss on Thursday night under the lighted field at Hale-Ray High School in Colchester. Coginchaug seemed determined not to let this one slip away. CRHS needed only 42 seconds to get the ball onto the feet of Buonanni and into the back of the net. Hale-Ray had no answers for CRHS as they continued to pepper the goal. Alison Luther had a heads-up play late in the period crossing the ball for a beautiful one-timer for Buonanni’s second goal of the game. Coginchaug’s third and final goal was a deflection off a corner kick and credited to Cassie Kovacs.
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The third game of the week was the toughest. Immaculate High School of Danbury has won the Class S State Championship all but twice since 2003. This year they are competing in Class L, and were still making quick work of the entire division. Through their first 9 games they had not been beaten; posting a 7-0-2 record and allowed only one goal on the entire season, while netting a staggering 35. Coginchaug made a good bid to hand them their first loss, but in the end Immaculate was too much. The Lady Devil’s were impressive, holding them to a scoreless tie at the half. CRHS played excellent defense, applied pressure in the midfield and worked to hold their share of possession. Immaculate’s first goal came from a surprise shot from long range. The second on a penalty kick that Mather nearly saved. Even though the girls lost 2 of the 3 games this week, they played very well in all of them.
BOYS SOCCER
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Through the first 5 games of the season, the boys were undefeated. They were 4-0-1, their only blemish was a draw against a Class L team. The boys were firing on all cylinders; they had a +8 goal differential, they scored 15 goals from 5 different players, the defense was becoming a tight unit allowing only 4 goals against. They were at the top of the Shoreline conference.
Most importantly they were playing well and building confidence. The team was living up to it’s potential and it was fun to watch.
Since that triumphant night in Portland 2 weeks ago, the team has had a streak of bad luck. The team lost staring Goal Keeping and All-State Candidate Jeff Cummings (senior) for the season. As well as starting Center Back Luke Fowler (senior) and starting Forward Tyler Kovacs (senior) . The other starting Center Back, Alex Markoski (senior) , was also lost for a few games, as well as starting Center Mid fielder Jack Temple (senior).
Clearly, in a paragraph about injuries, that’s too many uses of the words “starting” and “senior”, not to mention that 4 of them are team captains.
Without them, then team struggled. The Devil’s managed only 3 goals in the last 5 games, as opposed to the 12 in the first 4. They’ve lost 5 straight.
Coach Cap is still positive, and rightly so. The remainder of the team, as well as the players called up from the Junior Varsity, have been playing well together and competed well in 3 of the 5 games. “I’m very happy with the effort we put in last week, in fact, I’m extremely happy with it. The results, obviously, I’m not happy with. These are games we could have won with a full complement of players.” He added, “The Freshman we brought up to cover for the injuries and sicknesses didn’t disappoint and that’s always nice to see. It’s good to get them some experience, as well as getting a lot of our underclassmen experience not only for the future, but also for the post season this year.”
“A couple players have really stood out the last few games; Mike Decker has been playing phenomenally as well as Garrett Puchalski; they’ve both been very solid and have been carrying the team on their shoulders. Our backs have been playing great; Alex Preneta and Garrett D’Amato and especially [Freshman] Matt Sawicki , who had an awesome game last night [Friday at Hale Ray]. Jeff Perrachio is playing in a position he’s not used and had outstanding match. We need to find some scoring up top, and once we do that we’ll be fine. Kyle Judson’s doing a really nice job.”
Coach is still hopeful for this season, but also looking ahead, “These freshman seem to be forward thinking players and that’s going to help us until we can get our full complement back.”
