Playoff soccer
Colonel Gray Colonels senior AAA girls team advances.
CORNWALL — The Colonel Gray Colonels girls’ soccer team scored twice in under two minutes in a scrappy second half and earned a 2-1 victory over the Three Oaks A xewome n Wednesday in Cornwall.
Co lone l Gray moves on to the Prince Edward Island School Athletic Association (PEISAA) girls’ AAA gold medal game versus the Charlottetown Rural Raiders while TOSH plays the Westisle Wolverines for bronze.
Dates and times for the medal games will be released later in the week.
For Emma Moore, who scored the tying goal, the comeback win was business as usual this year.
“Unfortunately a lot of the season we’ve been down early. We really picked up our game and worked together, and kept our energy up,” said Moore. “I’m just excited to go to the finals.”
Despite the slow starts, Gray went 6-0-2 and finished first in the division. TOSH (05-3) placed last, including two 2-1 losses to the Colonels.
The game started with TOSH carrying much of the play.
That work culminated in Nikki Arsenault’s goal roughly mid-way through the first half when she tapped in a crossing pass from Phoebe van der Meulen and gave TOSH a 1-0 lead, which it held at halftime.
But Colonel Gray responded with energy and pluck in the second half and eventually Moore lifted a long, looping shot over the head of TOSH keeper Courtney Houde from just outside the Three Oaks box to tie things 1-1. About two minutes later Gray's Jenna Mae Ellsworth knocked in the go-ahead goal off a scramble in front of TOSH’s goal. TOSH responded with nearscores from Brooke MacArthur and van der Meulen, but couldn't equalize. But for those two minutes, things might have been different, said TOSH head coach Melanie Arsenault.
“Momentum shifted for that short period, and we recovered well and pushed to the end. Those few moments of mental lapse can make all the difference,” said Arsenault. “We always set a goal going into a game and our goal was to score first and we achieved that. We don’t have to be ashamed.”
In Wednesday’s other PEISAA soccer action, Colonel Gray defeated Bluefield 4-0 in senior AAA male while Charlottetown Rural blanked Westisle 3-0 in senior AAA female.
No score was available for the Montague-Charlottetown Rural AAA male game.
In senior A male action, Kensington downed Morell 2-0 and Souris doubled Charlottetown Rural 2-1.
In senior A female play, Colonel Gray outlasted Kensington 2-1 and Rural ousted Montague 5-1.