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Honored
Woodstock seniors Ava Coutu (23), Stella Brin (4) and Addy Smith (10) were honored on Senior Day for the girls’ soccer team. Photo by Dennis Snelling.
The Woodstock Academy girls’ soccer team still has five games to play. Unfortunately, those are all on the road. And the Centaurs still have some work to do.
A scoreless tie Oct. 9 with Ellington left Woodstock with a 3-6-2 record and needing some success to qualify for the postseason.
“We’re focused on how we’re playing and not so much on the result. I think 5-8-3 gets you into states too so this was better than a loss. It would be a lot harder to have to win three of five on the road rather than possibly sneaking away with a tie in one of them and win two,” said coach Dennis Snelling.
The Centaurs have to travel to NFA, Valley Regional, Fitch, E. Lyme and Killingly over the next three weeks.
It’s why the team celebrated Senior Day Oct. 9 and honored varsity players Addy Smith, Stella Brin and Ava Coutu.
It still hadn’t sunk in for Smith that she had likely played her last home match as a Centaur and had just celebrated her Senior Day
“Incredibly hard to believe,” the midfielder said. “Don’t remind me that it’s almost over.”
Snelling said, normally, Senior Day is not an easy day to play because of the emotions but he was pleased with the effort the team put forth against the Purple Knights (5-0-5). “It was a good game,” said Brin. “It was high intensity the entire time. We really kept it together.”
The Centaurs had some good chances. Junior Grace Gelhaus put one on Ellington keeper Kylie LaDestro (eight saves) early in the match. LaDestro stopped it, but the rebound almost trickled inside the right post. It missed by inches.
Coutu had a couple of chances in the second half. “We had a lot of chances. I thought we did real well, just didn’t put one in,” Coutu said.
Fiona Rigney had four saves in the first half for the Centaurs while Rebecca Nazer had to make only one save in the second half.
“I thought we had most of the chances in the second half. We made some changes defensively as to how we were going to line up against them and they worked except we didn’t get a goal,” Snelling said.
The Bacon Academy match was one Woodstock should have won, but didn’t. A late goal by the Bobcats gave the visitors a 2-1 victory over the host Centaurs on the South Campus turf field.
“I think the whole team wants this one back,” Snelling said. “I feel we had the majority of the chances, a lot of close range shots. Give credit to their goalie (Sammie Ciaglo). How does it get away? That’s the nature of soccer.”
The Centaurs pummeled Ciaglo (nine saves) for much of the second half. But the senior was up to the challenge, stopping all but one ball from getting through. Ciaglo also had a hand in putting the Bobcats up early.
Her punt from 40 yards out just 11 minutes into the game landed in front of a streaking Skyler Gustavsen who took advantage and put it into the back of the net.
It was the only tally of the first half. The Centaurs got the equalizer when Smith made a run through the Bacon defense and took a shot. She was denied by Ciaglo but the keeper had to go to the ground and could not contain the rebound which found Coutu’s foot.
The senior tied the game 1:14 into the second half. Bacon had few second half chances but took advantage of one of them.
Freshman Audrey Palmer beat Rigney to the ball and flicked it up and over the keeper’s head and into the right corner of the net for the game winner.
Marc Allard
Director of Sports Information
The Woodstock Academy
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