By Betsy Haugh / Scrimmageplaycva.com contributor
Penalty kicks are perhaps the most heartbreaking way to decide a champion no matter the teams involved. For the Albemarle girls soccer team, however, the drama and the heartache are on a completely different level.
The Patriots saw their season end on penalty kicks two years ago in the Commonwealth District quarterfinals. Last year, after capturing their first District title by route of the regular season championship, hopes of winning the tournament for the first time were squashed by penalty kicks. Finally this year, the Patriots were able to get the penalty kick monkey off their backs defeating Mountain View in the district semifinals.
But Monday night penalty kicks reared their head again, as another fantastic season for the Patriots came to an end when Broad Run won 6-5 on sudden death penalty kicks after a late comeback secured a 2-2 in regulation.
“It was a tough one. To be where we were and to end up losing it on PKs which has seemed to be our bug-a-boo for three years in a row now, it’s hard,” said Albemarle head coach Jon Hall.
The Patriots jumped out to an early lead 18 minutes into the game when junior Maggie Tubridy played a ball over the Broad Run back line that landed at the feet of sophomore Megan Schnell, who shot over the Spartans’ diving goalkeeper to snag a 1-0 lead.
Schnell had an opportunity to tally another goal in the ninth minute, but her shot ended up wide right. Two minutes later, Tubridy tried to collect a loose ball amidst a scramble in the box, which ultimately ended up in the hands of the Broad Run keeper.
The Patriots picked up where they left off in the second half, netting their second goal off a corner kick in the 24th minute. Sophomore Ali Starr delivered the kick to the back post, where Tubridy came flying in for the header to increase the lead to two.
However, later in the half, Broad Run freshman Caroline Kerns proved that 2-0 is the most dangerous lead in soccer. With eight minutes remaining in the second half, Kerns netted a goal to pull her team within one. Minutes later, she received a ball from the left side and placed a shot in the right corner, tying the game with 4:51 to play.
With regulation ending in a 2-2 tie, the game moved to overtime, where the Patriots had numerous chances only to come up empty.
“We had a lot of good movement, we had a lot of good chances, we even had chances later on,” Hall said. “We just either hit it directly to the keeper or too wide or too high.”
With penalty kicks looming, the first sudden-death overtime included a shot over the goal and a breakaway knocked out for a corner on the offensive side for the Patriots, while defensively senior goalkeeper Emily Leytham preserved the tie by grabbing a long touch off Kerns’ foot during a dangerous breakaway.
The second sudden-death period unraveled in much the same way, as opportunities for both sides came up dry, forcing the game into penalty kicks.
Tubridy, defensive standout Abby Davison, and Starr netted the first three penalty kicks for the Patriots, matching Darbie Kelley, Kerns, and Erin Brady for Broad Run. Both teams missed their fourth attempts, as the Broad Run shot sailed over the goal, and the Patriots’ strike was saved. In the fifth round, Cassandra Smith converted for Broad Run, forcing Albemarle’s Abby Mathes to come up big. With her score, Mathes sent the shootout into sudden death. Kelley and Tubridy again converted, before Broad Run took the lead in the seventh round and came up with the stop to earn the victory.
“It’s hard, especially because this is my senior year. I really wanted to keep going,” Leytham said.
With the heartbreaking loss, the Patriots’s season came to an end in the Northwest Region quarterfinals, but Hall still remains positive about the season as a whole.
“You can’t take anything away from these girls because a 16-2-2 season… if somebody told us at the beginning we could’ve had that, we probably would’ve been pretty proud of ourselves,” he said.
“I still say it was a very successful season. The whole idea about soccer is to learn and grow in the sport, and we had a lot of kids really step forward with a lot of good minutes and they have grown tremendously. I think it bodes well for our team next year.”
