Despite a little rain, a blackout and a feisty opponent, Cape Elizabeth’s girls soccer team prevailed Tuesday, eliminating Marshwood from the Class A state tournament, 2-1, at South Berwick.
Capers halfback Dana Riker scored the game winner midway through the first half and from there the visitors dominated play, not allowing the Hawks much rhythm on offense. Even so, a one-goal margin can be erased in an instant and Marshwood (8-5-2), seeded eighth, battled until the final horn sounded.
“They have some good players,” said Cape coach Mark Tinkham, “so I knew if they got chances they’d score goals, which they did in the first half on a defensive mistake.”
Alice Evans put the ninth-ranked Capers (7-5-3) ahead just minutes into the contest, but Hawks forward Nicki Reiner responded a short while later when she slipped the ball past goalkeeper Marla Houghton after a pass from midfielder Kayla Pope.
“I get those chances a lot and I rarely finish them, so it was a pretty big moment,” Reiner said. “I looked up and saw the opening and tapped it in. I didn’t think it was going in at first, but I was pretty excited.”
Then, at the 23:36 mark, Riker ended the evening’s scoring and put her team up for good.
“Helen Evans had a gorgeous cross that went to Natasha Barritt, and she gave me this amazing diagonal ball,” said Riker. “It was between myself and the keeper, and all I had to do was touch it.”
The humble senior added, “I didn’t do anything special. It was a great play before it got to me.”
In the second half there were long stretches where the ball was kicked back and forth, never getting deep into either team’s end. With 25 minutes left in the game, a burst of moderately heavy rain began to fall and then tapered to a drizzle.
And then the lights went out.
The entire field went dark, though the scoreboard remained on, stopped at 19:49.
“I actually started laughing,” said Riker. “There was a Marshwood girl next to me and she said it never happened before. It was pretty funny.”
According to school officials, a circuit breaker had popped, and the lights needed to cool before they could be turned on again. After a 25 minute delay, play resumed and by that time the rain had ended.
“I wasn’t happy that the lights went out,” Tinkham said, “but it gave us a chance to regroup because they changed their formation in the second half. We didn’t really adapt that well (at first).”
With adjustments in place, Cape repeatedly frustrated the Hawks’ attempts at generating a sustained attack. Finally, in the last two minutes, Marshwood was able to keep the ball in their opponents’ end, but when a header by midfielder Jen Perry floated over the crossbar her team’s hopes went with it.
“(The play) went back and forth a lot,” Evans said, “but once we started communicating in the second half, we stepped it up.”
The Capers now face a Friday meeting at top-seeded Scarborough (13-1-0).
Send questions/comments to the editors.
