By: Carolyn M. Hartko
With a tie and a loss on the road, the South Brunswick girls’ varsity soccer team is now 4-2-2. The Lady Vikings lost at East Brunswick 3-1 on Monday of this week, and they tied arch rival North Brunswick 2-2 last Friday.
According to Viking head coach Nancy Ducko, the quality of play in the two games was like night and day. Although South lost to the Bears, it was a vast improvement over the first meeting between these two Red Division squads when EB pounded the Vikings 7-2. During that contest, EB striker Heather O’Reilly netted four goals.
"We played a really tough game," Ducko said. "We worked hard, we worked together. And we were pretty successful at shutting down Heather O’Reilly. She only scored two goals. Our girls just went all out for 80 minutes. And I think that there was a good 20 minutes in the second half where we actually outplayed them. We had some opportunities to score again, and we couldn’t quite finish. But we definitely held our own."
O’Reilly got EB on the board first, but Viking senior Kiana Johnson tied the game up in the 15th minute of play. With her second goal, O’Reilly put the Bears back on top, bringing the halftime score to 2-1.
In sharp contrast to the way the Lady Vikings played on Monday, Friday’s 2-2 tie at North Brunswick was a dismal affair. According to Ducko, her squad seemed to be playing in slow motion.
"We just couldn’t get things going," Ducko said. "We couldn’t get it together. We played well in the double overtime, but it was a little too late by then."
North Brunswick has one of the area’s biggest scoring threats in senior left wing Trish Veloso. She had 13 goals going into the North/South contest.
"Veloso wasn’t necessarily a problem for us," Ducko said. "She did score, but our problem was that we were just off. And it wasn’t just one or two girls. It wasn’t the whole entire team, but there were many of us that were off."
"It was an unfortunate tie because we just weren’t playing the way we can play," the coach continued. "I honestly would rather the girls play the way they did against East Brunswick and lose, than play the way they did against North Brunswick and tie. Even if we had won, it wouldn’t have been a good win."
Ducko was hoping the wide-awake squad showed up for Wednesday’s home match against J.P. Stevens (played after press time). Then the Vikings have two tough road games in a row at Old Bridge on Friday, and at Piscataway next Tuesday.
THROW-INS: Viking keeper Rebecca Dezan had an excellent game against East Brunswick. The Bears out shot the Vikings 40-11, and Dezan came up with 10 saves.

