Ruden Sports News

Girls Soccer

St. Joseph Scores Three Unanswered Goals To Topple Staples

Dave Ruden Reporting From Trumbull

10.09.2024

Sara Parker scores St. Joseph’s final goal during today’s 4-1 win over Staples.

When Alexa Pino walked into her locker room at halftime of today’s game against Staples, her St. Joseph girls soccer team leading by 1-0, the star striker’s mental cloud raced back a year.

The Cadets were in a similar position and yielded a second-half score to their biggest rival. The 1-1 tie turned into the only non-win in a perfect season for the eventual FCIAC and Class LL champions.

“I said to everyone remember what happened last year and how it felt,” Pino said. “I just had a feeling inside me that we weren’t going to let that happen again because that was really the worst feeling.”

Staples did score the equalizer, but St. Joseph answered it less than four minutes later to start a three-goal run that resulted in a 4-1 home win. The Cadets (14-0, 13-0 FCIAC), the No. 1 team in the state, clinched the top seed in the league tournament for the fourth straight year and ran their streak of matches without a loss to 52.

And did all of this in emphatic fashion.

“I think it’s probably the best performance we’ve had all season,” St. Joseph coach Jack Nogueira said. “They came out to play. These girls just show up in big games. They figure things out, they have a desire to win and compete. That’s what this program is made out of. A desire to win and competing.”

The Wreckers (11-1-1) came in as the No. 2 team in the state. Though they have not defeated St. Joseph since the 2021 FCIAC semifinals, with a tie in between, every game had been close and often memorable, none more so than last year’s league final, a dramatic 4-3 Cadets win that ranks as one of the most exciting playoffs games in league history.

But the Wreckers did not match their opponent’s intensity at the outset and for most of today’s match, as they spent more time defending, though they were successful doing so in the first half.

“I don’t think — and I say this after a 4-1 defeat — St. Joseph is not a better soccer team than us,” Staples coach Barry Beattie said. “But today they competed harder. And that’s the difference. What they did do was competed and wanted to win more. And when you compete and want to win more you win championships, and that’s what St. Joseph’s does better than anybody. The baseline is if we compete with them we can beat them, but when you don’t compete you get shown up 4-1.”

There was little surprise that the Cadets’ first goal started off the foot of Pino, who has 15 goals this season and recently reached 100 for her career. This time she caught a break when her shot deflected off a Staples defender trying to block it and the ball went into the net for an own-goal with just over six minutes left before halftime.

Staples looked more energized at the start of the second half and, after Taylor Lunney was taken down in the box, Natalie Chudowsky converted her second penalty kick in three games to tie the score.

But the Cadets’ high pressure play resulted in Taryn Czick’s go-ahead goal less than four minutes later. Julia Nunes beat a defender and got a nifty assist setting Czick up.

Pino soon after made a steal, created space off the dribble and scored into the right corner in the 65th minute, and Sara Parker, who missed the start of the season due to injury, used a great individual effort for her 10th goal in nine games as she beat a defender on the left side, blocked a clearing attempt and when the ball landed at her feet hit a hard shot that Staples goalkeeper Sami Henske could only get a piece of.

“You have a lot of good players on the opposing team but we just had a good game plan, which is doing what we always do, high press, which is actually how we scored one of our goals, so we’re just gonna keep doing what we’re doing and see where it takes us,” Pino said.

Asked if she liked where the team is as the playoffs near and one or two rematches with the Wreckers possibly await, Pino said, “I do like where we are but it’s not enough. We need to keep pushing and I know we can get better. So we just have to keep working until the end of the season and the final whistle.”

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