Friday, October 24, 2014

The Fab Five, Section 3 for October 23

1.) Last time out, she had a hat trick & an assist and I just put her in the extras at the bottom of the page. Alright, Mariah, I get it. You need to be up at the top of this list! The combination of this game being a true blue rivalry game and it being a 4/5 sectional quarterfinal matchup was enough to make you think it'd be a real battle. Nope. Mariah Williams, the Serena of the Whitesboro Williams sisters, had 4 big ones in Whitesboro's 5-0 beatdown of New Hartford. In the 2 games since she verballed to play soccer as an Albany Great Dane, she's dropped 7 goals & an assist in 2 sectional wins. D1 bound and certainly playing like it! Next up for Whitesboro is the team they always bump into, defending sectional champ and top-seeded Jamesville-Dewitt.

2.)It's been a common theme over the last couple years that when Liverpool needs something, look no further than Ore Akinpelu. The same can be said about last night, when she popped through a hat trick - all 3 of her team's goals - in their 3-1 W quarterfinal victory over Auburn. They're a balanced team, with 10 players scoring at least twice this year, but it seems like Akinpelu has always got some of her team-leading 13 goals in the bigger games. They could use more of that coming up in their AA semifinal game against Baldwinsville.

3.) Speaking of Baldwinsville, how about what Hailey Couchman did? The Bees were nearly upset by 7th seeded Fayetteville-Manlius, but Couchman just had to handle business. With the score at 2-2 in overtime, she ripped a pair of goals through in the OT session - pushing her up to a hat trick since she had 1 of her team's regulation goals - to lead Baldwinsville to a 4-2 win. Scoring the go-ahead goal in OT of a sectional game? Nice. Scoring the go-ahead goal AND the insurance goal? Niiice.

4.) Haven't talked much about the North Country this year. That might be alright with them, as a couple teams have just quietly handled their business. Lowville is one of those teams, with the top seed in Class B over teams like Westhill and Cazenovia, who have received much more publicity. They've been getting it done with defense. The same was true in their quarterfinal match, where they beat South Jefferson for the 3rd time in 4 matches (the other was a draw) by the score of 2-0. Teams have gotten used to seeing 0 by their goal total against Lowville - in 17 games, they've only given up 3 goals. They've never given up more than 1 in a game, 14 shutouts on the year while outscoring their opponents 49-3. Cazenovia in the semifinals presents a sure challenge to that goal total, but they've stood up to tough squads already. We'll see what the OHSL has to offer.

5.) The real winner of the day goes to all the fields with good drainage systems. This rain is stupid. A number of games had to be pushed back because field conditions were too raw. Weeks like this are why all that money you put into your irrigation was a good idea. Turf fields were fine of course, it's the grass ones that have the issues with rain. A few Section II schools had to relocate, but it seemed to be all good (or just about) in Section III. Hopefully this crap weather ends soon, I want to get some pictures taken.

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