On Thursday night, the girls’ soccer team beat Hillsdale High School 2-1 to commemorate their senior night. Senior Gigi Edwards stated, “We just were not going to lose on our senior night; we have come too far this season and had too much energy to lose tonight.”
The evening started with a nice ceremony for all the seniors in which a younger member of the team read out a personalized speech for each senior. To make the senior night special, 10 of the 11 starters were seniors.
The Bears started the game off strong. They kept possession, combining lots of passes in the midfield. They later had multiple chances, causing Hillsdale to panic.
In the 16th minute, senior Susie Wagstaff had a big header chance, shortly followed by senior Anika Duszynski earning the Bears a corner kick.
The last play of the first half was a massive chance from junior Valerie Latu, who narrowly missed the goal, keeping the score at 0-0 going into the half.
The second half unfortunately started with an injury for the Hillsdale Knights. After medics helped her off, the second half got fully underway.
The Bears persisted on attack, and had a great chance created by senior Kate Nelson with 30 minutes left in the second half. Finally, seconds after Nelson’s miss, the Bears connected multiple passes through the Hillsdale defense, and junior Camille Melcher finished off the sequence, putting M-A up 1-0.
With renewed intensity to increase their lead, the Bears started to apply a lot of pressure on the Knights, culminating in a shot from senior Fabiana Bolaños that hit off the crossbar.
A few minutes after the near miss by Bolaños, junior Avery Galles stopped a Knights’ breakaway, and then dribbled the ball down into Hillsdale territory, finally laying it off for sophomore Alessia Bolaños to cut inside and bury it into the bottom corner. Up by two goals, the Bears were now in a comfortable position, and they continued their dominance through the second half.
Within the final minutes of the game, the Bears conceded a goal, but still earned three points from a hard-fought 2-1 victory.
Nelson spoke about how it felt to finally share the field with senior Jane Fiorentino, who has been battling injuries since freshman year, saying, “It was such an amazing night, especially with Jane coming back for her first game since freshman year on senior night. It was so amazing to finally share the field with her.”
Junior Shea Dekshenieks added, “We are playing really well as a team right now. It is the perfect time to hit our stride, as we are going into playoffs.”
