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LaBrae survives furious Kennedy rally in overtime victory

WARREN — LaBrae survived a furious John F. Kennedy comeback attempt, as Bailey Tennant made a penalty kick in overtime to give the Vikings a 6-5 victory in a Division III Kent District girls soccer sectional bracket final.

LaBrae advanced to play Champion in a district semifinal match at Champion Monday at 7 p.m.

“Oh my God,” Tennant said about making the penalty kick, laughing. ” That was so stressful. My team was talking behind me and they kept cheering me on. They said, ‘Just focus on the goal.’ And that’s what I did.”

The game, originally scheduled for LaBrae High School, was moved to Warren G. Harding’s Mollenkopf Stadium to take advantage of the stadium’s artificial turf, due to the pouring rain that occurred throughout the match.

Both teams, who play on grass at their home stadiums, had some difficulties with footing in the first half, and the game remained scoreless for the first 19 minutes. However, LaBrae quickly added two goals, first by Michaela Rowland and then an own goal on Kennedy, credited to Tennant.

Ahead 2-0 to start the second half, LaBrae’s lead proved to be far from safe. Less than two minutes into the period, Alissa Scattino got the Eagles on the board on a header off a corner kick.

Just a minute later, however, LaBrae responded with another Rowland goal, extending the lead back to two goals, 3-1.

Myriah Merten responded for the Eagles just 48 seconds later, closing the lead to a single goal, once again.

An Alexis Huscroft goal extended the Viking lead again and ultimately meant that the two teams combined for four goals in the first five minutes of the second half. LaBrae then increased its lead to 5-2 with a Marissa Roberts goal, with 25 minutes left to go in the game.

However, that’s when things got wild, as the Eagles rallied to score three goals. Merten scored two more goals to earn a hat trick, followed by an Antonella LaMonica penalty kick to tie the match at five with three minutes left in regulation.

“I switched her to forward,” Kennedy coach Cara Russo said about Merten. “I thought she would make more of an impact on the team, on the game. I made a couple of position changes (at half) and I talked about playing wide more. Just playing with less touches and clearing the ball to the back quicker and pushing up quicker.”

Eventually, the two teams went to overtime, and less than seven minutes in, Roberts chased the ball into the open field with a Kennedy defender on her back, but Eagles goalie Alexa Chieffo was able to slide in front of it and make the save.

However, it was ruled that Roberts, who fell as Chieffo was diving at the ball, was fouled from behind by the Kennedy defender, leading to a penalty kick. Roberts fired the PK in for the victory.

Both coaches said after the game that they didn’t see the play clearly, so they were uncertain of what actually happened.

For Kennedy (9-5-3), their season ends in bitter disappointment, after a hard-fought comeback against LaBrae.

“We learned a lot this season, and we have a young team,” Russo said. “We have a lot of freshmen, we don’t have a lot of depth, we only have 17 girls total. So, hopefully we’ll get a larger roster next year.”

LaBrae moves on to face a familiar foe in Champion, an All-American Conference Blue Tier rival and the No. 1 seed in the district. Thus far, the Vikings have come up just short in each of their first two meetings against the Flashes this year, but those close calls should give the Vikings plenty of confidence heading into Monday night.

“We tied them (Champion) the first game, they scored at the very end, under a minute left to go,” Vikings coach Diane Downey said of her team’s two meetings with the Flashes this year. “We were winning a lot of the game, and that was disappointing. And then, we went over there (to Champion), and gave up a corner kick to them right before halftime. So, we held them to 1-0.

“It’s always a competitive game with us and Champion. No matter what, we always play them very well, so hopefully it’s a good match on Monday.”

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