Canfield soccer coach Simone notches 300th victory
By ERIC FORTUNE
BOARDMAN
The Canfield girls soccer team attacked from the start in Monday night’s matchup against Boardman, scored twice in the first four minutes and cruised to a 5-0 victory.
The win gave Cardinals coach Phil Simone 300th victories. He coaches both the Canfield girls and boys soccer teams.
“It just means I’ve been around a long time,” Simone said. “I’m starting to show my age a little bit, I guess. No, I mean, it’s been a pleasure being around for that long and being at the same school for pretty much all 300 of them which is really nice.
“I told the girls, it was nice, because we had a rough game Saturday. It was their first loss of the season. We bounced back from it and the game they played tonight was phenomenal. The ball movement, the combinations, it was nice to have something like that be your 300th win.”
Boardman and Canfield previouly played on Aug. 30 and the Cardinals (7-1-2) eked out just a 1-0 victory because of the play of the Boardman goalie Camille Holzchuh.
“Camille is a great goalkeeper,” Simone said. “She was on the younger Canfield teams. I’ve had the pleasure of working with her a little bit. She’s a great kid. She is very tough. She can only stop so much sometimes. She had a phenomenal game that game. If Camille isn’t on goal for them that game, it’s probably 5-0 or 6-0. She had some phenomenal saves tonight too, but she just got her feet moving. We got her moving side to side.”
Hannah Stein scored the first two goals for Canfield at the 38:18 and 36:28 mark as Holzchuh got put into some bad situations that allowed the Cardinals to seize early momentum. They never gave that up with 30 shots on goal and just four for the Spartans (2-6).
“That was one of the things we talked about,” Simone said. “Last game, we were up 2-0 at halftime and we kind of got comfortable. Ontario scored on us two times in four minutes. That was one thing we were working on and talking about. We have to go at teams early and try to put them under early. They did in both halves.”
Stein finished with two goals and two assists.
She came to play tonight,” Simone said. “She was ready. It was good to see that out of her tonight. She’s one of those players that is pretty steady. She doesn’t get rattled too much.”
Simone felt his team moved the ball well and didn’t have to exert as much energy because of that.
Canfield got 21 kids into the game, which Simone felt kept them fresh.
“We have a deeper bench and that kind of wore them down tonight,” he said.
Canfield added a goal from Chloe Kalina at the 27:59 mark to make it 3-0 at the half.
If there was any doubts, after the loss on Saturday, Canfield quickly put those thoughts to bed as Macey Malinky and Morgan Carey scored two quick goals less than two minutes into the second half to make it 5-0.
Malinky finished with a goal and two assists.
She’s been one of our key plays all year,” Simone said. “She brings it every game. We can depend on her to get something done, whether it’s up front or if we put her back to help get control of the game a little bit.”