Lady Bulldogs’ Huge Offense gives them a 2-0 Start

The Kenmore East Bulldogs Girls Soccer team have gotten the 2016 season off to a strong start with two big wins, and a 1-0 record in the NFL. They beat Cardinal O’Hara 14-0 on Tuesday and the CSAT Eagles 11-0 on Thursday.

“The girls have been playing pretty well,” says Head Coach Chris Robey, “they worked really hard this off season…preseason, we did a lot of running”. Robey has been telling his team that the hard work will pay off in close games, and even though they haven’t been in any close games yet, it looks as though the hard work has paid off for the Bulldogs so far. Captain Olivia Colby thinks that the first two games have been good but they were by no means perfect, “It’s nice to get our confidence up with the two wins, but we have a lot of minor things to work on” said Colby. Captain Emily Caruana attributes the success to team cohesiveness, “I think we connect really well as a team. We connect on and off the field” says Caruana.

Ken-East got off to a very quick start Thursday scoring 2 goals in a matter of 2 minutes. Junior Emily Dellapenta had a hat trick in the 1st half to give the Bulldogs a 5-0 lead. “(Emily) is playing some of the best soccer I’ve ever seen her play” said Robey. Dellapenta had her 4th goal in the 2nd half, giving her 7 for the season. She also has 2 assists in 2016.

The Bulldogs went 3-12-1 last season with a very young team that graduated only one senior. They hope the lessons they learned from last year will help this year. Now in 2016, the Lady Dogs are experienced. The 3 seniors have a combined 9 years of Varsity experience. Colby, Caruana and Sarah Burhans are juniors, each playing their 3rd year on Varsity.

With that experience Robey wants his team to be more accountable on the field, “I expect a lot out these players and they know what’s expected of them”, said Robey “by that I mean that when they mess up they know that it is not acceptable and they better not do it next time.” Colby believes that the extra time at the Varsity level paid off for her and her teammates, “It helped us a lot, we were able to learn from older players” said Colby.

Caruana has 4 goals and 6 assists in the first two games of the season. Fellow forward Hannah Parucki has 5 goals and 2 assists to start off her senior year.

Colby has been the backbone of the defense, along with senior Haylee Ensminger. Isabella Bona and Alexis Cummings will start in the midfield this season. Bona has 4 assists and Cummings has chipped in 4 goals for the Bulldogs. Lindsay O’Brien has 6 saves and 2 shutouts as the Goal Keeper for Ken-East.

Kenmore East will play again on September 10th as they travel to Niagara Wheatfield to take on the Falcons at 10 am.

For more information on Kenmore East Girls Soccer go to their Team page http://wnyathletics.com/schools/kenmore-east/girls-soccer/