By Rich Fisher
Fish4scores.com
Oct. 30:The season may have ended for the Nottingham High girls’ soccer team today, but the good times are just beginning for the Northstars.
Tenth-seeded Nottingham suffered a heart-breaking, 1-0 loss at 7th-seeded Lawrence today in the first-round of the NJSIAA Central Jersey Group III tournament. Lawrence moves on to play the winner of Tuesday’s Steinert-Westhampton Tech game on Thursday.
The match’s lone goal came early in the first half when Gabby Caruso set up Kendra Dempsey for her third goal of the year. That hardly got the Northstars down, however, as they continued to attack for the remainder of the game and held much of the play.
Nottingham had seven shots on goal as opposed to six for Lawrence, but Syracuse-bound keeper Ally Wakeman came up with seven saves for the shutout. Sara Haas made five stops for the Stars.
In Christie “Fish” Fink’s second year as head coach, Nottingham ended up 9-8 to finish with three more victories than last season. Included in those triumphs was a Mercer County Tournament win at Princeton and successes against long-time antagonists West Windsor-Plainsboro North and Hightstown. They also played well in a 3-0 MCT loss to perennial power Pennington. It was Nottingham’s first winning season and the most wins by a Northstars team in at least 10 years.
The Stars’ achievements came with just four seniors, as Madison Colabella, Madison Diaz, Julianna Spatola and Stephanie Teixeira, who suffered a season-ending injury midway through the year, will all graduate.
And while their efforts and leadership will be missed, Fink is excited about what she has coming back. Leading the way will be standout freshman Gia Girman, whose 14 goals and 4 assists put her among the Colonial Valley Conference’s scoring leaders. Girman’s twin sister, Gabi, played well as a defensive starter.
While the Stars lose key defenders in Diaz and Spatola, it’s a different story on offense as players who scored 33 of the Northstars 36 goals will all be returning. They include juniors Giuliana Pocino (6 goals), Michaela Donnelly (1), Isabelle Miranda (2 goals, 1 assist) and Ivonne Vasquez (4 goals, 5 assists), and sophomores Lauren Ahern (2 goals, 1 assist) and Emily Midura (4 goals). Texeira had three goals before getting hurt.
Also back will be Haas, who saw the majority of time in goal this year.
So, while the Stars will take a while to get over today’s loss, they won’t feel so bad when they think about what’s coming back.
It has been two straight years of improvement under Fink, and don’t be surprised if she makes it three straight in 2018.
Steinert-Westhampton Tech postponed until Tuesday
Fresh off it Mercer County Tournament title, Steinert was ready to roll but the weather was not. Today’s first-round CJ III game was postponed due to poor field conditions, and will be played at Steinert on Tuesday at 2 p.m.
