Round 3 goes to Canfield

Prep tournaments | Soccer, volleyball

After two ties, Cardinals win, 3-0

By DOUG CHAPIN

Vindicator correspondent

CANFIELD — It is a near certainty that nobody saw this coming.

The Poland and Canfield High girls soccer teams played ties of 1-1 and 2-2 during the regular season — that’s 160 minutes (2 hours, 40 minutes) of dead-even soccer.

But on Thursday night the Cardinals scored twice in a 10-minute span of the first half and went on to a 3-0 victory in the Division I district championship game.

Canfield (12-2-6) will play West Geauga at 7 p.m. Wednesday at Twinsburg in a regional semifinal. The school’s only previous girls soccer district title came in 1998. The Cardinals had not reached the district final since 2001.

“I thought after the two ties during the season it was going to be a lot tighter game,” Canfield coach Phil Simone said. “Our girls were pumped up, they followed our game plan and they executed in the first half. They just went out and did a great job.

“This absolutely was one of the goals we set for this group, to win a district championship.”

Meredith Gleichert started the scoring for Canfield with a goal at the 23:00 mark of the first half. She carried the ball down the middle of the field from her left back position but was stopped by the Poland defense at the top of the penalty area.

The ball bounced around and ended up at Gleichert’s feet and she fired toward the lower left corner from about 15 yards away. Poland goal keeper Abbie Frank got her hands on the low shot but it had enough on it to carry into the goal.

Less than 10 minutes later, at the 13:52 mark, Jenne Battaglia took a through ball from Audrey Smith and scored on a shot from about 18 yards away on the right side. Battaglia lofted the ball over Frank’s head and found the top left corner of the net.

“I thought in the first half we came out flat,” Poland coach John Cavalier said. “We’ve done that a couple times this year, just starting slow. Give Canfield all the credit, though, they came out ready to play. I thought our girls picked it up a little bit in the second half but we just couldn’t find the net.

“We were out of our game a little bit. We are a really good passing team but that didn’t show tonight. And in the first half they beat us to most of the 50-50 balls.”

Gleichert scored the final tally with 36 seconds remaining in the half off a corner kick when she poked the ball home in a crowd from about eight yards out.

Despite the three-goal differential, Canfield did not dominate. The Cards finished with 12 shots, including seven on goal. Poland took 13 shots but had only six on net. Frank recorded four saves for the Bulldogs and Jackie Podolsky had six saves for Canfield.

Poland (15-3-2) now has lost in the district final three times in the last four years, including losses to Howland a year ago and in 2006.

“We’ve got eight seniors we’re going to lose but we still feel we have a great nucleus in our program,” Cavalier said. “We had a lot of sophomores on this team. We’ll have just three seniors next year but we’ve got a good bunch of kids coming along. The seniors will be missed, they are very talented, but I think we’ll be back.

Before the two ties this regular season, the previous meeting between the teams also ended, ironically, with a three-goal difference. That game, a 4-1 victory for Poland in the district semifinal round a year ago, provided additional motivation for the Cardinals.

“Actually we have that score on the dry erase board in the locker room,” Simone said. “We definitely remember that game.”

The Cardinals and their fans certainly will always remember Thursday night’s game also.