Steinert explodes in second half to down Nottingham
HAMILTON >> Despite dominating possession for the first 40 minutes of the game Steinert could not score. In the first nine minutes of the second half, the Spartans couldn’t stop scoring.
The result was a 4-1 girls’ soccer win for unbeaten Steinert over Klockner Road rival Nottingham, as the Spartans tallied four times within 8:47 after intermission.
“We came out, and not playing for a week we were a little sluggish to start,” said Steinert coach Mike Hastings, whose team is 5-0. “Once we got our bearings straight we started keeping the ball in their end.
“Our Achilles heel has been our girls don’t want to shoot, so we’ve kind of been hounding them to pull the trigger. Obviously, early in the second half it kind of started clicking for us.”
It was more an explosion than a click.
In the second minute of the second half Gabby DeLisa lofted a free kick into the box that Giana Pittaro re-directed to Aidan Sheehan for her fifth goal of the season. Just 1:31 later, Pittaro found Lynzie Morgan in the box to make it 2-0, and 45 seconds after that Ashley Navarro converted a Sheehan cross. Thus the game went from scoreless to 3-0 in a matter of 2:14.
“I think just coming in and being 4-0, our confidence was high and we came in expecting to do big things, and I guess it got to us,” Sheehan said. “It was a wake-up call at halftime. We knew Nottingham would battle hard against us being a rivalry team. We just came out in the second half knowing we had to get the job done.”
Pittaro capped the Spartans’ scoring with 31:13 remaining, and Nottingham (2-4) got one back late on Emily Midura’s goal.
“I think we fought the first half, it could have gone either way,” said Nottingham coach Christy Fink, who was Hastings’ JV coach at Steinert two years ago. “We know Steinert’s a good team, they have the depth. They have some older girls who have been together.
“They’re a great group of girls, I know them very well. I have a lot of respect for Hastings as a coach. They do the right stuff but we were playing with them in the first half.”
Once the first goal came, however, there was no stopping the Spartans.
“Definitely,” Sheehan said. “It makes us settle down. From there you just play and the goals kept coming. Hastings always says get the first goal and the rest will follow.”
Fink, whose team has dropped four straight after a 2-0 start, felt it was a matter of her team letting down and Steinert taking advantage.
“We weren’t marking well, they were getting up,” she said. “They know how to play, they know what to do with the ball. They were moving off the ball and we weren’t following our marks. They did what they had to do. Four goals in 10 minutes is hard to take.”
Unless, as Steinert discovered, you’re the team scoring them.