Princeton wins on OT penalty kick
PRINCETON >> For nearly 50 minutes, the Princeton High girls soccer huffed and puffed and piled on pressure with nothing to show for it.
It got to the point the Tigers were wondering if the breakthrough would ever come during their Mercer County Tournament first round game against a Nottingham team forced to put 11 players behind the ball after star forward Gia Girman limped off with an injury in the final minute of the first half.
Princeton finally got the break it needed when Vanessa Ponce earned and converted a penalty kick with 1:53 left in overtime to send the seventhseeded Tigers past the 10th-seeded Northstars, 1-0, on a windy Thursday afternoon.
“There’s always that anxiety over time,” said junior Greta Bush, who pushed up from centerback to an attacking winger midway through the second half. “It’s frustrating, but sometimes it happens when you don’t get the opportunities that you want. I thought we played really well together, we just didn’t come up with it until the end there.”
Princeton (8-4-3) snapped a run of four straight games without a win and advanced to a quarterfinal contest against second-seeded Princeton Day. The Tigers dropped a 3-1 decision to the Panthers earlier in the season.
“Going into the MCT, we tied some of the games that we had a chance to win,” senior midfielder Lauren Rougas said. “Going into the second round of the MCT, this is definitely going to fuel us.”
The Colgate-bound Rougas controlled the middle as Princeton put Nottingham under siege in the second half and overtime, out-shooting the visitors, 23-3-.
Yet, Christie Fink’s Northstars (7-8-1) held on admirably thanks to some excellent goalkeeping from Emily Hubbard (eight saves) and timely tackles by sweeper Oriana Seitz.
Hubbard produced a pair of fine saves in the second half when she first denied Ponce at the near post and then palmed Rougas’ powerful header over the bar with 25 minutes remaining.
“You’re defending and doing a lot of chasing around,” Fink said. “It’s exhausting, but they held on and did everything they possibly could but put the ball in the back of the net, and that’s what you have to do to win.”
Nottingham was forced into a defensive shell after Girman, a 25-goal scorer and reigning CVC Player of the Year, was injured late in the first half. Princeton, to its credit, did a nice job neutralizing Girman in what was an evenly-played first half, but without the junior forward as an outlet, the Tigers could push numbers forward because there was no threat of a counterattack.
“When I face a player like Gia, I know she’s really technical,” Bush said. “I want to keep her in front of me because I know she likes to move the ball, so I don’t dive in. I know I’ve got beat by her a few times, so just make sure to keep her in front.”
Eventually, all the hard work paid off.
And a sigh of relief. “It does get frustrating after a while,” Rougas said, “but with the stakes are this high, this is where teams can either fall or build off of it.”
Nottingham (7-8-1) Princeton (8-4-3) 0 0 0 — 0 0 0 1 — 1
Goals: Ponce (p) (P); Shots: 3 (N). 23 (P); Saves: Hubbard 12 (N). Marciano 3 (P).