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Soccer season ends with Lake Catholic blanking Canfield
By BOB ETTINGER
RAVENNA
Finding an opening to let loose with a shot isn’t always easy. In those situations, perfect execution is required. The Canfield girls soccer team was unable to capitalize on its few chances Saturday while Mentor Lake Catholic did in a 2-0 loss in the Division II, Region 5 regional championship match at Gilcrest Field.
“We’ve talked to that with the girls,” Canfield coach Phil Simone said. “The farther you go in the tournament, the better teams you play, the less opportunities there are. When you do get one or two opportunities, you’ve got to put them away.”
The Cougars (17-3-1), who had come up empty in their five previous trips to the regional final — the last three on the blue turf at Ravenna — will play Mansfield Madison on Tuesday.
“This is my first year at Lake and I’m from Maryland,” Lake Catholic coach Chris Hastings said. “I don’t know anything about the history of the past so the blue turf didn’t scare me or have any inclination on me.
“I’ve seen Boise State play and they usually win on their home turf so I said we’re the home team and we might as well win on the home blue turf.”
“Everyone said there was a curse,” Lake Catholic forward Keka Babic said. “Obviously we broke it and we’ve never been to the Final Four so it’s really exciting.”
Lake Catholic netted its first goal in the 33rd minute putting the Cardinals (14-3-4) in hole heading into the intermission.
“Obviously, 0-0 would be better than being down, 1-0, at half,” Simone said. “We were a little flat-footed probably the last 10 minutes in the first half and they caught us being flat-footed.
“We stabbed and we didn’t get to the ball and she hit one near-post on the keeper.”
Babic took a throw, settled the ball at her feet before slipping around some defensive traffic and put the ball in the back of the net.
“It was on a throw-in and Giulana [Grgic] told me in Croatian, ‘This is yours.’ So I just turned to my left, beat the one defender and shot near-post.”
Kati Druzina slipped a defender and dribbled in from 40 yards out before depositing it in the net for a monumental 2-0 lead for the Cougars in the 10th minute of the second half.
“We were pressing them hard,” Simone said. “We had the ball down here a lot. She gets a ball probably 40 yards out, shakes one defender then just streaks down the sideline, gets by two more defenders and just buries one.
“We kept playing hard, but I could sense, too, that the wind was taken out of us a little bit. The drive wasn’t quite there. It looked like they were starting to not believe and that’s a tough thing to deal with. They didn’t give up. They kept going at it.”
The Cardinals attempted just two shots on goal, both in the second half, in the loss.
“They had a lot of numbers back because they have Kati Druzina up top and they can outlet the ball to her and she can take on two or three defenders alone,” Simone said. “They don’t need that many numbers up top so they can keep more numbers in the back to try and crowd and we just couldn’t break through.”