Season ends in heartbreaker

The GCSU soccer team ended its season by being eliminated from the Peach Belt Conference championship semifinals by the University of Montevallo in Evans County this past Friday.

“Obviously I’m disappointed in the outcome,” head coach Juan Pablo Favero said. “It’s not what we had planned for or hoped for.”

The Bobcats took the lead over the Falcons when senior forward Jamie Nevin approached the Montevallo net off of a breakaway and placed a powerful kick into the Falcons’ net, giving Nevin an unassisted goal giving GCSU a 1-0 lead.

“We possessed the ball really well,” Nevin said. “We pretty much dominated most of the game and didn’t really give them too many opportunities to score until late.”

After Nevin’s goal, the remainder of the first half was scoreless and the game went into halftime with GCSU leading 1-0.

For the first half, the Bobcats outshot the Falcons 5-4 and outnumbered the Falcons 2-0 in corner kicks.

Even though GCSU continued to outshoot Montevallo in the second half, the Falcons were able to even the score in the 80th minute when they worked the ball into Bobcat territory and placed a shot into the back of GCSU’s net, making the score a 1-1 tie.

Just seven minutes after the score was tied, the Falcons struck again when a penalty kick made it 2-1 in favor of Montevallo.

Although the Bobcats continued to play aggressively, they were unable to score again and Montevallo seized the semifinal victory, 2-1.

“As a team, we have worked very hard on our finishing, connecting passes and communication,” senior midfielder/defender Daria Owen said. “I think we did that well but clearly it wasn’t good enough for that game.”

GCSU junior goalkeeper Mary Rob Plunkett was able to prevent six shots from going into the net and allowing just two shots to pass by her.

The Bobcats conclude their fall 2009 season with a 10-7-5 record, 5-2-4 in PBC play. The team is losing seven seniors from their roster for next season, all of which are graduating from GCSU.

Starting forwards Lyric Burnett and Nevin, defenders Kara Teresi and Erica Kolodin will all be leaving GCSU in the spring. Owen will also be graduating from GCSU as well as defender/midfielder Morgan Cobb and midfielder Sarah Young.

“Whenever you lose a group of seniors, you almost wish that you could have them back one more year,” Favero said. “I only had the privilege of working with them for two years, but they are a group that is very special to me and I’m thankful that I got to work with them.”

The Bobcats will work hard this offseason so that they can be ready when the 2010 season arrives in the fall, their coach said.

“It’s going to be interesting because you lose a lot of experience and players so somebody’s going to have to step up and fulfill that role,” Favero said. They’re going to have to score goals for us, we’re going to have to do that better next year.”

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Nov 13 2009. Filed under Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry