Second chances don’t come too often in life.
But Tuesday night, the Kenmore East Lady Bulldogs soccer team had an opportunity at redemption and they took advantage of it.
The Bulldogs defeated the Lake Shore Eagles 4-0 in a Section VI girls soccer Class A2 pre-quarterfinal matchup.
Kenmore East lost to the Eagles by a goal last season in the pre-quarterfinal matchup.
“Last year we lost to them in the same round, same game,” Kenmore East head coach Chris Robey said. “I told them that we had to come to play today.”
The Bulldogs kept the pressure on to start the game generating nine shots and had all seven corners in the first half.
Kenmore East scored a fluky goal as Alexis Cummings’ corner kick bounced in front of the net before going off of Olivia Colby for the game’s first goal in the 13′.
According to Roby, Colby is playmaker who is willing to do what is needed for the Bulldogs.
“She’s a stud,” Roby said. “She’s the teams’ only premier player and it shows. She takes corner kicks, free kicks and wins a lot of headers. It wasn’t a pretty goal, but she did what she had to do. It was a kick start for us to get that early goal.”
Just as the first half came to an end, Emily Dellapenta took a shot at the net. The ball went off the Lake Shore goalie and Emily Caruana rushed to the net to bury the opportunity with just over one second left to give the Lady Bulldogs the 2-0 lead.
The Bulldogs went right back to work in the second half.
Cummings fired a shot to the bottom right corner from 20 yards out for Ken-East’s third goal in the 41′.
Roby told his team at halftime that they couldn’t afford to ease up.
“A two-goal lead is one of the most dangerous leads in soccer,” Roby said. “When we able to get that goal like two minutes into the second half, it was great. If we don’t score that this could be a different game.”
Lauren Reinhart had strong chance to score off a header but it went just to the right of the net.
Dellapenta finished the scoring in the 62′ as she had a long breakaway chance. Dellapenta’s initial shot was stopped but she found the rebound and scored on the empty net.
Lake Shore head coach Katie Terranova was proud of the way her team played, especially the seniors.
“I have 13 seniors so it’s the end of their season and careers. I thought they worked hard and played together,” Terranova said.
Gabby Gray had strong night in net making nine saves and picking up the shutout for Ken-East.
Reinhart assisted on both second half goals.
Colby was proud of her team for finally being able to take care of business in the playoffs.
“It was nice to get a sectional win because we’ve never won a playoff game as the favored team,” Colby said. “We were favored to win this game and that’s what we did.”
The Lady Bulldogs’ win is the first playoff triumph at Adams Field in over a decade and the first on the new turf.
Kenmore East will head to Pioneer on Thursday to take on the top seeded Panthers at 6 p.m.
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