Greece Arcadia is clutch again in semifinal victory
CORTLAND — Flair for the dramatic. Late-game heroics. Call it whatever you want. The Greece Arcadia girls are just happy that their Cinderella soccer season has stretched all the way to today’s Class A state championship match.
“You can say we like to make it interesting,” junior midfielder Allie Borrelli said with a big grin after her goal, a 12-yard shot off Kristen Powers’ pass with less than two minutes left in the fourth overtime, gave the Titans a 3-2 comeback win over Section II’s Burnt Hills.
“We just don’t give up.”
The cardiac kids from Arcadia (15-7), seeded just sixth in the Section V tournament, play for a second state title in three years today at 1 p.m. back at the State University of New York at Cortland. The Titans face the most decorated girls soccer program in state history in Long Island’s Rockville Centre South Side, which has won 14 state titles.
Section VIII’s South Side beat Eastchester 1-0 Friday. But after what Arcadia has accomplished, anything seems possible.
The Titans came from behind to win the sectionals, 2-1, then Kelly Shoniker’s goal with 6.3 seconds left in the quarterfinals ousted unbeaten Williamsville East. Arcadia rallied twice Friday.
“This is the most clutch team I’ve seen,” said goalie Jessica Sexton, who was on the 2007 squad that won the state title match on a goal with 18 seconds left in OT.
“We work to the very end of every game.”
Sexton was in the middle of Friday’s drama.
Burnt Hills (13-5-4) took a 1-0 lead just 6½ minutes in after a rare mistake by Sexton, who mishandled Jillian Beatty’s cross. The ball slipped through Sexton’s hands, off her hip and trickled in.
“First goal this season she’s let in that she probably shouldn’t have,” coach Jeff Hibbard said of the Long Island University-bound keeper.
But the third-year starter redeemed herself in a spectacular, albeit strange, way for a goalie.
Just four minutes after her gaffe, Sexton tied it on a diving, 10-yard header off Jori Semrau’s free kick. Hibbard used the unorthodox move of bringing up Sexton on potentially dangerous free kicks and corner kicks the past two years. A good athlete, the 5-foot-11 Sexton had scored once this fall.
“Listening to (the Burnt Hills) coaching staff you could hear, ‘What’s going on?’ Obviously, they didn’t scout that,” Hibbard said. “And Jess just hit a bullet.”
It was Arcadia’s first corner kick and it caught the Spartans off guard. In fact, Sexton was umarked as she darted through the middle of the box.
“I cue Jori when to go (and take the kick) and I just make a dead sprint,” Sexton said. “If the ball comes, then I just go for it. I wanted it so bad. I had so much aggression (after her mistake).”
Burnt Hills coach Brian Bold thought it shook his players. Every corner after that “became a mental thing,” he said, “that we’ve got to deal with.”
Sexton came up big again a few minutes after her goal, making a diving deflection with her right hand of Maria Malone’s 12-yard shot.
Burnt Hills, located in Ballston Spa north of Albany, went back on top five minutes into the second half. Malone sent a low pass in front and Beatty beat a defender to it and one-timed a seven-yard shot.
But Shoniker, the sister of former Arcadia basketball star Megan, came through again. She tied it with 24:12 left in regulation on a 12-yard shot.
“We fight to the end,” Borrelli said.
