Girls’ Soccer Ties Against Tabor: Soxie Optimistic Heading Into E/a

The girls’ varsity soccer team tied 2-2 against Tabor Academy on Saturday. This was its fourth tie of the season, leaving its record at 3-7-4. The team recovered from a 0-2 loss at Groton School last Wednesday.

Lower Ogechi Nwankwoala said that the girls noticed a significant improvement from their past games. She attributed this to a small fast-paced and clean scrimmage during Thursday’s practice.

“We’ve just made a huge leap in our playing,” she said. “At our game we were varying what we were doing with the ball and being creative, and that’s where a lot of our opportunities to score came from.”

The Tabor Seawolves scored its first goal off of a cross in the first half. Shortly after, prep Dennesha Rolle scored for Big Red off a cross from senior Margaret Coogan. Tabor rebounded, and a few minutes later they scored their second goal off a header from a corner kick. This left the score 1-2 going into halftime.

In the second half, postgraduate Kat Cucullo sent a penalty kick into the back of the net after being fouled in the box. “I’ve taken the other penalty kicks this season, so we as a team decided I would do it again and it went in so that’s always fun,” she said.

“At our game we were varying what we were doing with the ball and being creative, and that’s where a lot of our opportunities to score came from.”

Upper Louisa Bartkovich thinks that many games have resulted in ties because the girls have difficulty finishing. “Every game we have played we could have won,” she said. Bartkovich continued by saying that against Tabor, Big Red passed well between forwards and midfield and reacted well to the opponent’s defensive players.

Nwankwoala agreed. “We are a strong team so we stayed in the game and compete with [other teams], but we don’t finish our shots and put the game away early,” she said.

Cucullo added that the girls have been “very reactionary” instead of heading directly towards the goal. She then outlined things the team did well, such as passing the ball, keeping possession and playing through the entire game, “which was something that we haven’t always done in the past,” she said.

The team is anticipating a close game during the annual E/a games next weekend.

According to upper Samantha Weaver, one way the team can improve is by controlling the ball in the air and making strong passes to each others feet. They will continue working on their cohesiveness as a group and finishing on offense. Weaver said that each year the team gets closer to beating Andover. Last year, the game ended in a tie. “I think this year we will come out with a win,” Weaver said. For this to happen, she thinks they need to create more scoring opportunities and win every ball in the air.

“I only believe if Andover thinks this is an easy win for them, they will be quite shocked come E/a,” Bartkovich said.

The team’s last home game will be Wednesday, Nov. 9 against New Hampton School. Many seniors who have been on the team since their prep year encourage fans to come and support them during their final game at Big Red.