GIRLS SOCCER: Troy tops Athens for fifth straight district title, sixth straight rivalry win
BY JAKE LOURIM
STUDENT CORRESPONDENT
TROY — The Troy baseball team had hammered Troy Athens that morning, 13-5. The Troy softball team started its 8-0 dominance of Athens just before the start of the Troy girls soccer team’s game against Athens.
And the soccer team completed the clean sweep Saturday.
Troy won its fifth game over Athens in the past two years to capture its fifth straight district title, this time in shootout fashion, 1-0, over the Red Hawks on Saturday at Sterling Heights Stevenson.
A scoreless regulation and overtime complete with close calls and physical play turned up the intensity to a maximum. Troy had won four times in the previous two years, but Athens had the better record and the better ranking.
Saturday was the classic rivalry game, a hard-fought, low-scoring battle with few opportunities and fewer shots on goal. It ended in a shootout, with the players fighting fatigued legs and high temperatures well into the overtime periods.
The shootout started ominously for Troy. The official did not ask Troy goalie Alison Holland if she was ready before Athens’ Kendall Wachowski nailed a shot into the left corner of the net with Holland still preparing.
“Usually the goalie is supposed to tell the referee when she’s ready,” Holland said. “Basically, I wasn’t set, and the girl just shot it. I never told the ref I was ready.”
Holland was upset with the referees, but argued to no avail. She moved to the sideline while Troy senior Erin Wrubel stepped up and made her shot, then calmly moved back into the net to watch Athens senior Gabby Mancini missed a shot wide left.
“I had to change my routine a little bit,” Holland said. “I had to come in and get set right away. I was pretty angry at first, but I had to let it go.”
The Colts scored on all five of their penalty kicks Tuesday night, and converted all four of Saturday. Holland saved Athens’ fourth shot to end the shootout early, 4-2.
It was sophomore Sarah Troccoli’s shot that ended it. Troccoli lined up and struck the ball of the crossbar, but the rebound went off Athens goalie Amanda Harris’ back and crawled into the goal.
Zawislak, who lets the players volunteer for a penalty kick if they feel confident, sent the same five players to shoot on Saturday — Wrubel, Nadine Bratu, Grace Goodrich, Troccoli and Brittany Guitar.
“I trusted in the girls, and they executed,” Zawislak said.
After the Thursday district semifinals were pushed to Friday because of rain, the teams played their semifinals and had less than 24 hours to prepare for the final at 1 p.m. Saturday.
But if there were ever two teams to play under short preparation, they would be Troy and Athens, as the two have met up in the past two state tournaments and five times overall in the past two seasons.
Athens played in an overtime shootout against Fraser Friday night, but coach Todd Heugh said that although he went a couple players deeper into his bench, the fatigue was not a dramatic factor in the game. He also said his players were still confident despite losing to Troy 2-0 on May 16.
“We always think we can win any time we play them, to be honest,” Heugh said. “It’s a crosstown rivalry, and a lot of the girls know each other. It’s a lot of hard work and grit, and you just have to want to out-will. We advanced yesterday the same way we lost today. I’m super proud of my kids — they played 200 minutes of soccer in less than 24 hours, and they did great. I think kids knew they could rest tomorrow. I just think they were going to give it all they had.”
“I think we had more pressure on because we won the first game around,” Troy coach Brian Zawislak said.
Regulation and especially overtime featured a shortage of chances, as is the case with most Troy-Athens games. Both teams have strength in the center midfield, so they controlled the ball well in the middle but failed to get within 20 to 25 yards for scoring opportunities in the final third.
Heugh said it was a combination of fatigue and good defense. Troy only allowed Athens one shot on goal in the teams’ regular-season meeting, and the Colts only managed four shots.
The closest chance of the game was with five minutes left in the second overtime period, when Troy senior Madison Hirsch ran down the right flank and, almost at the end line, shot it toward Harris. Harris tipped it up off the bottom of the cross bar. When it came down, the officials ruled that it did not cross the goal line, and Harris picked it up.
Beyond that, both teams played stiff defense. The physicality of the game was clear from the outset, and both teams grew tense over calls and no-calls.
Heugh adjusted his lineup for his team’s second meeting with Troy, putting five players in the midfield to create an imbalance with Troy’s 4-4-2, knowing how important the midfield would be.
“They’re a lot bigger than we are, so just talked about trying to match up better with them on 50-50 balls and slide one more player in and give up a defender in order to try to control something in the middle,” Heugh said. “We limited their chances as well, but they certainly did a good job of limiting ours.”
“They gave us some fits because they threw an extra midfielder in there,” Zawislak said.
“Todd tried to imbalance the center of the park by bringing a fifth player in, and it made things confusing. But we talked about at halftime, just leave the weak side and we’ll sort it out from there.”
Troy will now head to the regional tournament for the fifth straight year. The Colts have won the regional semifinal each of the past four years. This year, they will play OAA White foe North Farmington, which won the district title with 1-0 wins over Royal Oak and Berkley.
Troy beat Royal Oak and Berkley by identical 3-2 scores.
The semifinal is Wednesday at 5 p.m. The final is Friday at 6:30 p.m. against the winner of Grosse Pointe South (14-6-1, 7-2-1 MAC Red) and New Baltimore Anchor Bay (15-2-3, 9-1-2 MAC White).
(Jake Lourim is a senior at Troy High School and a member of the S.H.P. Media Group / www.northoaklandsports.com Student Correspondence Program. He is publisher of website www.troycoltsportsupdate.com and a member of the Troy school newspaper editorial staff. He can be reached by e-mail at j.lourim@comcast.net)
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