Drury trips up Lee on Columbus Day with Ghidotti goal

LEE – The Wildcats came up on the short-end of the kick on Monday, when Drury’s Cori Ghidotti knocked in a beautiful cross from center-half Danielle Racette for the lone goal in a 1-0 win over Lee.

“We moved the ball well, and we made some positional changes moving Danielle from sweeper and put her at center-half and that helped us today,” said Drury Coach Molly Maczywor, whose team improved to 2-5-1.

Drury’s goal was set up by defensive stalwart Alison Tassone, who won a 50-50 ball in the Drury backfield and sent a perfect pass up to Racette, who raced down the right sideline making one move on a Lee defender before making a beautiful cross in front of Lee goalie Sara Middleton to Ghidotti, who found the back of the net.

“With the run, we have talked about being hungry and our problem has been putting the ball in the net,” said Maczywor. “I told them that we had to stay hungry and follow up on positions – go to the net with the wet conditions – and they did that today.”

Lee dropped to 5-4-1 before being trounced by an undefeated Pittsfield on Tuesday. Monday’s loss was especially tough, as the Wildcats dominated the field the entire game and missed on a penalty kick in the second half, paired with two indirect kicks that hit the post.

“We obviously controlled the game, “ said Lee Head Coach Lauren Finnegan on Monday. “We obviously had a lot of opportunities – we didn’t do what they did and that was put the ball in the net.”

Victoria Murphy missed on a penalty kick late in the second half that would have tied the game by hitting the ball too square as her kick sailed high to the left and over the cross bar.

“Victoria is a fantastic player and she feels awful for missing that kick,” said Finnegan.

Lee’s Murphy, Stephany Young, and Moriah McKenna controlled the midfield and kept the pressure on Drury by forcing almost 20 shots, however, Drury goalie Ali Tatro was up to the desk as she came away with 17 saves.

“There are other games we lost because we didn’t play well, [today] we just didn’t do the final job, which was to score a goal,” said Finnegan.

A difference in the game for Lee was the absence of both Megan Gaul (head) and Eileen Dooley (college visit), which created a gap on the left side of the field as both Murphy and Young were able to attack from the right side of the Drury backfield.

“We missed Dooley and Gaul today, which hurt a lot, “ said Finnegan.

Tuesday’s loss to Pittsfield leaves the Wildcats at least seven points shy from qualifying for the Division 3 Western Massachusetts Tournament with little less than half the season left.

“We are in good shape right now, we are halfway through the season and we have wins that we need and we have games coming up that we can win too,” Finnegan said.

Drury will continue to move lineups around in order to create more scoring opportunities in hopes of getting back to .500.

“It was a good win for us,” said Maczywor, “and a hard-fought game; luckily, we had the fates on our side today with that penalty kick.”

Posted by Tim Davis on October 11, 2012. Filed under High School Sports,Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry