PHS girls give No. 1 a scare

Little Tigers turnaround year ends

By: Justin Feil
   Freehold Boro came away with a win over the Princeton High School girls’ soccer team Thursday, but the Central Jersey Group III top seed certainly knew how hard they had to work for it.
   "It was our team’s best game of the season," said PHS head coach Greg Hand after the 1-0 loss. "We were aware we were playing the No. 1 seed. The girls really wanted to win. They wanted to advance. I think it was a terrific effort to do that. It’s a tribute to the girls that they believed that their best effort would give them a chance to move on."
   The Little Tigers end their season at 10-7-1 record, but it was a far cry from last year’s four-win season. PHS ultimately earned the No. 9 seed for the CJ III tournament and topped No. 8 Monroe before falling at the hands of No. 1 Freehold.
   "The girls just wanted to become as good as they could," Hand said. "It wasn’t just in terms of their skills and tactics and so on. They went through a process as every team does of working out team values and just considering what they would have to do to become their best. One of the best things about this year is the girls worked so hard to figure out how to be a great team."
   Striving for that goal never ended until the final whistle Thursday. PHS had its chances, but like many teams before it had discovered, it found Freehold equal to the task.
   "We definitely sent some good serves across the face of the goal," Hand said. "We almost got a couple of finishes. Certainly, we did our share of ball winning and playing the ball forward to our attacking third.
   "It was far and away the team’s best defensive effort of the year in all parts of the field. Defenders did an excellent job with Freehold’s forwards through the midfield where we did a lot of ball winning. Up top, we tried to keep the pressure on their defense, which came in with 13 shutouts already. The girls stayed focused and played with more composure and tenacity than they have all season."
   They were spurred on by the usually vocal PHS parents contingent which made the trip to Freehold.
   They gave the Little Tigers a boost and witnessed the final game for four Little Tigers seniors who were key parts of the turnaround this season.
   "Coach (Jason) Carter put it well at the end of the game," Hand said. "He said the seniors were critical to leading the team to that second round of states. They set a great example. Merle (Reading) and Dani (Vildostegui) got better and better as this season went along at figuring out how to motivate the team.
   "Chelsea (Wittman), who’s a senior, didn’t play in goal today, but gave us great work throughout the year. Zanna (Crowley) had her best game of the season today when we needed everyone’s best. Dani has been picking it up a notch in the last phase of the season, doing a lot of ball winning against a lot of tough midfielders and forwards. Merle was just a dynamo in the back today and inspired everybody."
   They leave behind a team that now knows how good its best can be. It wasn’t quite good enough to top Freehold on Thursday, but it serves as the base for next season.
   "It may be far away, but given the way today’s game went, there was a sense of being anxious to come back and try to take the next step," Hand said. "These girls developed a lot of heart and more of a winning mentality as the season went along. They learned a lot from the losses. They learned a lot from the close contests, whether they were wins or losses."