By Price Thomas / Scrimmageplay.com Contributor
It took 79 minutes and 52 seconds, but an Abby Davison goal with eight seconds left lifted the Patriots not only to a 1-0 win over the visiting Stafford Indians, but also secured the regular season Commonwealth District crown in dramatic fashion.
The Indians looked committed to making life difficult for Albemarle, packing in their defense in an attempt to slow down the Patriot attack.
“We’ve started working more on finding ways through the defense, but we haven’t quite gotten the decision making process down yet,” said Albemarle coach Jon Hall. “Girls were open and could have gotten another touch or gotten their bodies in better positions, but seemed anxious to pull the trigger. It’s hard to fault your offense when you have that much production we just had a hard time finding the back of the net tonight.”
The chances came thick and fast for the Patriots, dominating the overmatched Indians throughout the game. In the 20th minute Abby Mathes got her head on a Joy Piirto corner offering, only to see her effort parried away by the diving Stafford keeper.
Midway through the first half, Hall began mixing up his lineup, moving starting right back Piirto into the middle of midfield, searching for the key that would unlock the Stafford defense.
“We tried a few different looks,” Hall said. “Joy’s first instinct is to go forward and we wanted to see if we could catch them by surprise. She was able to find space to shoot and also played some great through balls that we unfortunately couldn’t capitalize on.”
The second half proved to be more of the same for the home side, continuing their barrage on the Stafford goal. In the 57th minute another Piirto corner was cause for commotion in the Stafford penalty area as senior Taylor Hale’s headed effort was saved off the line by a lunging Indian defender.
Despite his team’s inability to find the back of the net, Hall couldn’t help but marvel at the defensive effort of his group.
“The defense held up again taking us to 13-0-1 and giving Betsey 11 shutouts,” Hall said. “This is our fifth straight 1-0 game but I’ll take it. I don’t think there is ever a good time to lose and I just want to keep enjoying this as long as I can. A win is a win is a win.”
As the clock ticked down under 20 seconds Junior Abby Mathes raced over to take the corner kick. As the ball dropped into the box a failed clearance landed at the feet of freshman Abby Davison and with eight seconds remaining she fired the ball past the helpless Stafford keeper, giving the Cardiac Patriots another victory and the Commonwealth district regular season title.
“It’s so special no other team in the past 10 years has done this,” Piirto said. “It’s really special to be a part of this team and really exciting.”
The Patriots don’t seem to care much about how they win — just that they keep doing it. They look to keep adding to that impressive record when they take on Colonial Forge on the road Friday.
