Manville girls win two straight

Team continues to score goals

by John E. Powers, Sports Writer
   For the first time in two years, the Manville High School girls’ soccer team had a two-game winning streak to extend as the week opened.
   Manville walloped Dunellen 6-0 last Thursday as junior forward Amy Evanylo scored two goals and assisted on another, and the team followed it up Friday with a 3-1 win over North Plainfield.
   ”We did a great job against Dunellen, but we had to take it up a few notches against North Plainfield,” MHS head coach Erin Delaney said. “I reminded them that we can’t go out there thinking we have it in the bag. We know what it feels like to be laughed at for lacking skills, lacking communication or experience. We stressed after the game (Dunellen) that we have one under our belt, let’s go get another one.
   ”I told the girls that we can’t expect to run into another opportunity like we did against Dunellen,” she added.
   Delaney was right. The game vs. North Plainfield was scoreless at the half.
   ”I told them (at halftime), ‘ladies, it’s not going to be easy,” said Delaney, whose team is 2-8 after finishing 1-17 last year. “We were missing a lot and the goalie was fumbling the ball, so we had to attack their goalie and finish. We kept being called for offsides. Amy was frustrated. Christine (Pohl) and Sabrina (Brozyna) were frustrated. We had about nine direct kicks, but we weren’t getting any breaks.”
   That changed in the second half.
   Sophomore Sima Isachenko scored 4:22 into the second half off an assist from her sister Anna. Evanylo made it 2-0 just over 10 minutes later before Isachenko capped it with her second goal. North Plainfield got on the board at 60:53 when Katherine Guarzino scored.
   On the first ball, Sima Isachenko’s shot trickled past the goalie after Anna delivered a through ball. The second goal came off a high off a pass from Rebecca Burke.
   ”Rebecca was taking a beating on defense,” Delaney said. “She was getting tired, so we pushed her to center mid and she did a phenomenal job. She gave us great ball control in the center of the field. I actually need two of Rebecca and two of Dana (Mortensen). It was a chance I had to take, moving Rebecca to center mid.”
   Sima Isachenko’s second goal was unassisted.
   ”She took it in by herself,” Delaney said.
   Manville, which lost 3-1 to North Plainfield last year, had a 22-15 advantage in shots. Junior Sylwia Pupek played the first half in goal and freshman Megan Loriot took the second half. Pupek made three saves and Loriot had nine.
   ”We kind of stopped playing after the third goal and North Plainfield was really trying to get another,” Delaney said. “Luckily we held them off.”
   No such mystery existed with Dunellen, though the game was a little too physical for Delaney’s taste.
   ”It was definitely a physical game and the refs didn’t control it at all,” she said. “They were starting to lose it. There were blatant elbows to the face as we came running by. We were getting knocked on the butt, legs were in the air.”
   But the result was no contest.
   Evanylo scored 41 seconds in off an assist by Brozyna. Brozyna scored at 6:35 off an assist by Pohl. Evanylo scored again at 9:13 off an assist by sophomore outside middie Corrine DeSantis. The Lady Mustangs led 3-0 at half.
   Sima Isachenko scored on a rebound of a Evanylo shot to make it 4-0 at 14:56, Brozyna scored again at 27:35. That was assisted by sophomore Haydee Hernandez. Pohl capped the scoring off an assist by Anna Isachenko at 30:50.
   The only bad news in the game as that senior middie Angelika Lazur was probably lost for the year with a knee injury. Lazur had just gotten cleared from another knee injury.
   Last year, the Manville girls scored just 11 goals for the entire season, five coming in a 5-0 win over Dunellen last Oct. 16. They’ve already scored 17 with Evanylo accounting for seven.
   Manville recorded 7-0 and 5-0 wins over North Plainfield and Bound Brook, respectively, early in the 2006 season. That was their last winning streak before last week.
   The MHS girls were scheduled to play host to Bound Brook Tuesday, play at Mount St. Mary Academy Thursday, then face a rematch at Bound Brook Friday night. That game was originally scheduled for Monday.