Girls’ Soccer Team Pulls Out Dramatic Win, Keeps Coming Out On Top

By Andy Hutchison

With Saturday night’s game still scoreless in the waning minutes, the Nighthawks kept applying the pressure and Coach Marc Kenney continued to ask his players to keep plugging away, reminding them of the time on the clock. Eventually, the Newtown High School girls’ soccer coach had given in to the likelihood that this game would end in a tie.

“To be quite honest I was — at the end of that thing, in the last five or ten minutes — looking content with a tie,” Kenney said.

But the Nighthawks kept plugging and finally capitalized for a dramatic 1-0 win. Brittany Tolla used her speed to turn the corner on a Joel Barlow defender. Tolla out-raced goalkeeper Kerri Eden, who slid in attempt to break up the play along the goal line, to the ball. She passed to a wide-open Amy Martin, who drilled home the game’s only tally, with just 2:01 showing on the Blue & Gold Stadium scoreboard clock.

There were plenty of hugs — Tolla jumped into Martin’s arms, and the celebration began, took a break for the final couple minutes of game play, and resumed when the final horn sounded.

“I saw Amy running forward at the top of the box,” Tolla said. “She knocked it home for the win.”

“I think it was just a matter of time. We were extremely composed, extremely confident,” Martin added.

No secondary assists are given in soccer, but if they were, Brenna Kelly would get one. Kelly made the winning play possible when she made a cross-field pass to send Tolla into position to assist Martin. “I knew I couldn’t pass it back in that situation,” Kelly said.

Kenney noted that the field switching play was something the team had been working on lately. “We’ve really been working on trying to get the ball wide and I think that that’s our success — when we play the ball wide and try to use our flanks it spreads out the field a little bit more and it also allows us to get some people forward, into the box, and you saw it. We committed to that today,” the coach said.

Newtown got the ball wide on several occasions and created scoring opportunities also with the occasional through ball up the middle. The Hawks compiled nine shots and fended off a tough Barlow team. The Hawks improved to 7-0-1 (coming off a tie with Weston in another game in which Martin logged the only goal, two days earlier), and Barlow fell to 4-2-1.

“I think that, right there, is an excellent effort by two really good teams,” Kenney after the Barlow game.

NHS followed up the win over Barlow with a 5-2 victory at New Fairfield on Monday. Sarah Lynch scored twice, and Tressa Scott, Martin, and Jess Keller also found the net.

The Nighthawks are optimistic they can maintain this high level of play as the season unfolds and the playoffs begin.

“We’re so compatible as a team. We love each other and we work for each other,” Martin said. “I really have a lot of hope for us.”

“They have committed to each other and they are a special group of kids who want to be around each other. They’ve really bought into what we want to do, what I’m looking to do soccer-wise. But as far as their relationships go with each other — that’s the type of thing you can’t teach that really wins you games, especially games like this,” Kenney said after the Barlow tilt.