Quinlan unbelievable in MHS win
By: Justin Feil
Kelly Quinlan still has a hard time believing all that she was able to do last Saturday.
In the Montgomery High School girls’ soccer game against Hillsborough, the senior started the Somerset County quarterfinal at sweeper, moved up to midfield to score the tying goal in the closing minutes of regulation, moved again to goalie at the conclusion of overtime to stop two penalty shots and then scored the game-winning penalty kick.
"It was very exciting especially because Hillsborough is such a big rival," said Quinlan, a Cougar tri-captain. "We never usually got to play them in Counties because we usually never make it. We did this year."
And Quinlan helped MHS to only its second SCT semifinal appearance ever. The Cougars will take on Ridge on Saturday in a rematch of last year’s Central Jersey Group II tournament first round that ended MHS’ 1999 season. Though it took an outstanding team effort to defeat Hillsborough, Quinlan’s efforts overshadowed everyone else just because of the movie script-like chain of events.
Kelly Quinlan is the Gold’s Gym/Princeton Packet Athlete of the Week.
Going into the game, MHS head coach Jeremy Beardsley felt comfortable with Quinlan anchoring the defense at sweeper in place of Lauren Thurlow, who had moved to goal for the injured Renee Totaro. He was reassured further when the Cougars jumped out to a 1-0 lead on a bullet by Liz Ghazi less than a minute into the contest. But Hillsborough scored a goal before the half and one shortly after to take a 2-1 lead and set up Quinlan’s heroics.
With 10 minutes to play and still trailing by a goal, Beardsley moved Quinlan, who admits that she prefers offense, up to her normal midfield position to try to bolster the offense. It didn’t take long. On a well-placed corner kick from Cristina Araps, Quinlan went up to head in the tying score with less than two minutes left in regulation.
"Right before she was jogging into the box, I told her now was the time," Beardsley said. "She gave me a look, and I really almost sensed she was going to score. That game, she really elevated her play above everyone else."
For overtime, Beardsley sent Quinlan back to sweeper and neither team scored to force penalty kicks to decide the contest.
"The day before in practice," Quinlan recalled, "we thought it might go down to penalty kicks. We knew they were really good. I knew a bunch of them from playing club soccer. We knew they didn’t think as much about us as we did about them. We were ready for a tight game.
"The day before, Coach said, ‘Why don’t you try goal?’ We were kind of fooling around. We had tried it the year before, but we never came to penalty kicks."
But immediately following overtime, Beardsley called over Quinlan and asked her if she was ready to go. Having never played goalie before in a game, Quinlan took the goalie shirt and gloves from Thurlow to prepare for her first action in goal in one of the biggest pressure situations.
"I was kind of nervous," Quinlan said, "but everyone on the team was telling me to do my best. They realized I hadn’t played before. And Lauren was very supportive. She supported me the whole way."
Quinlan gave Montgomery a chance by stopping Hillsborough’s third and fifth penalty shots to justify her first action in net.
"Lauren Thurlow played a terrific game," Beardsley said. "As the game went on she just got better and better. The reason I put Quinlan in is that her reaction time is so very good. I told her to trust her reactions. Both saves were reaction saves."
In between, three Cougar shooters scored to make it 3-3 going into the final kick, to be taken by Quinlan.
"After everything else, I was so numb by the time I was kicking it, I wasn’t too nervous," Quinlan said. "The fact that it was tied helped too, because if I missed, it would have just gone on."
But when Quinlan took off her goalie shirt and deposited the ensuing kick in the back of the net, Montgomery had its biggest win since Beardsley started coaching last season.
"As a team, we couldn’t have asked for a better person to take the last shot," Beardsley said. "She’s a senior, a leader and a captain. She’s playing perhaps the best game of her career and to be kicking for the win. I knew she was scoring, and she buried the shot."
And thus ended an unbelievable day for Kelly Quinlan.