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Ieraci flips Cards to regional
By BOB ETTINGER
NILES
Canfield forward Marissa Ieraci felt her stomach do a bit a flip with just more than a minute-and-a-half remaining in Thursday’s Division II girls soccer district championship.
It wasn’t a bad feeling, however. The freshman had just delivered the go-ahead score in a 2-1 victory over Lakeview at Bo Rein Stadium.
“Soccer sometimes is a funny sport,” Canfield coach Phil Simone said. “You can possess an an entire game and they literally had two, maybe three opportunities the whole game and they put one in.
“The good news is our girls didn’t give up. [Lakeview] getting a goal, we could’ve sat back but we went after it,” Simone said. “Marissa did a great job controlling, turning and getting a great shot off on goal.”
Ieraci found the ball at her feet, beat a defender and went to the middle of the field where she launched a shot over the goalkeeper to break a 1-1 tie with just 1:34 to play.
“Honestly, I can’t really remember it,” Iercai said. “I just remember going in. I don’t remember what happened. It just happened. I remember I didn’t think it was going to go in. I thought I was going to puke [in the moments after the goal].”
From the Bulldogs’ perspective, Ieraci caught them sleeping.
“I’ll you exactly what happened,” Lakeview coach Shawn Varley said. “We had all three center mids and most of my outside mids watching. They never came back on defense.
“They left my defense alone on some of Canfield’s best and when you do that, they’re probably going to bury it in the back of the net and that’s exactly what happened.”
The Cardinals (13-4-4) will face Revere in a regional semifinal at Ravenna on Tuesday at 7 p.m.
“Tonight we’ll celebrate and later tonight I’ll start to think about tomorrow,” Simone said. “The girls will bounce back, too.
“They celebrate tonight, but tomorrow it’s back to work preparing for the next team. They’ve done well with that this year even though they’re one of the youngest teams I’ve had. They’re mature enough to handle that. It doesn’t matter [who we play]. We’re just fortunate enough and happy to be there and playing whoever’s there to play.”
Sam Yanci scored the equalizer for the Bulldogs (13-3-3) with 7:04 left.
“I don’t really think it was a roller coaster,” Varley said. “I think there was one blip there where we scored, but for pretty much the whole game we didn’t follow the gameplan.
“So, when you deviate from the gameplan, stuff doesn’t work and it didn’t work. Combine that with maybe a lack of emotion and maybe intensity and that’s what happened on the field.
Yanci chipped a shot over the keeper from outside the hash mark about 30 yards out on a free kick.
“I saw that she was on her back post,” Yanci said. “We practiced free kicks and we went to their game against Niles and we had seen the goalkeepers weren’t very good at staying on their line so I just chipped her. It’s an awesome feeling.”
Marisa Scheetz had put the Cardinals up goal after she took a pass across the face of the goal from Alana Petracci and drilled it home with 15:08 to play in the first half.