BLUE STREAKS FIND FEET, NET IN SECOND HALF
Saratoga girls explode for 7-goal second half against Albany High
SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. » The final tally wasn’t a surprise for the Saratoga Springs girls soccer squad Saturday morning, a 9-0 walkover win against visiting Albany, but how the Blue Streaks got to there wasn’t a walk in the park.
Saratoga scored just twice in the first half, battling its own game plans and Albany starting goalkeeper Sophia Goldsmith.
“We were doing a lot of good stuff, we were shooting, but their goalkeeper was absolutely phenomenal in the first half,” Saratoga Springs head coach Adrienne Dannehy said. “She was blocking a lot of our shots, we just weren’t finishing those goals that when we’re 1-v-1 with the keeper that was kind of our problem.”
Only senior Julia DiMenna was able to break though, as expected in the second minute of play, beating Goldsmith and then Lauren Livingston from a cross from the right side in the
the 33rd minute of play for the slim 2-0 halftime lead.
A combination of bad luck for the Falcons and re-grouping by the Blue Streaks led to a seven-goal second half with DiMenna tacking on two more goals and four more Saratoga players finding the back of the net leading to their first Suburban Council win of the year.
“We learned from the first half what we needed to do and we set a goal of how many goals we wanted to score. We worked hard to get that and took it from there,” Julia DiMenna said.
She again opened the half with a goal four minutes in and then scored her hat trick goal, this time a quick tap off her left foot to beat the Albany replacement goalie for the fourth goal of the contest.
Goldsmith was stellar in the first half, but exited at halftime, struggling with pain in her right hand, presumably a jammed finger that the sideline was able to stabilize adequately during the break.
“We didn’t know what to expect from the goalie, she was very active and knew where the ball was going to go,” DiMenna said. “We weren’t ready for that, but she was really good. We just had to work with that.”
Against Albany’s pair of goalkeeper replacements, Mia DiBlasi, Isabelle Shields and Ainsley Cumming each scored with Livingston adding her second goal of the contest in the rout.
The halftime adjustments led to the watershed half for the Blue Streaks.
“Their defense was very high up, so we had to watch for off sides and we’re not used to that,” DiMenna said. “We talked at halftime and figure out how to make passes to connect and score.”
The hat trick from DiMenna was a welcome site for Saratoga after earning two early 1-1 ties to Guilderland and Ballston Spa, respectively.
“I need at least one, two from her every game,” Dannehy said. “The way Julia is, if she’s not scoring goals, she’s assisting the goals.
“She’s always been consistently been that person for us the last three years. She needed a game where she was able to finish and this was a good game for her.”
The seven goal-second allowed the Blue Streaks to continue to work on skills during live competition early in the season.
“I love when games are a great time to work on something we’ve been working on in practice and it’s nice when you’re not playing each other,” Dannehy said. “They worked on a lot of things we talked about in practice yesterday, they were able to work on stuff today and it was just finding feet and not giving the ball away.
“Passes should go right to us, they were working on decision making and for us its execution of that and they worked on that today and did a good job and of course finishing much better in the second half.”