Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Golden Start to the HS Season

They say good teams find a way to win and the Haddonfield girls did just that last night when Emily Carson found the net for a golden goal in the second minute of the second OT to give the Bulldogs a 2-1 win in the first home night game in 2010.

The goal overcame a mistake by keeper Lindsay Brophy, who stepped outside the box with the ball, giving the Garnets a direct free kick from 20 yards out. Kay Hosey drilled it into the lower left corner - although Brophy seemed to get a hand on the ball - to tie the score with 23:15 left in the second half. Haddonfield had scored in the first half when a Heights defender headed the ball into her own goal at 28:16.

Off the field everything went well - especially for the first stadium game in some 10 months. By 6:40 I had met with the referees, briefed the ballgirls, had both starting line-ups and we were ready to go. The only minor hitch was a slight delay in getting the Bowdoin College Meddiebempsters' version of the Star Spangled Banner playing. After a few anxious seconds of watching an old CD player (pressed into use because the stadium's CD player wasn't working) we heard "Oh, say can you see ..." and breathed a sigh of relief.

After that it was about 92 minutes of entertaining - albeit still high school - soccer.