Soccer
MIDDLETOWN – 80 minutes of soccer was not enough in Friday night’s battle between Appoquinimink and Caravel’s girls teams.
As it turned out, neither was 20 minutes of overtime and with no penalty kicks in the regular season, the Jaguars and Buccaneers would have to settle for a scoreless tie, which was just fine with Caravel coach Tom Brackin.
“We’re missing two players with long-term injuries and another player couldn’t be here tonight, so we were playing with just 12 players,” Brackin explained. “We were a little undermanned, but I was proud of their effort to get out of here with a tie.”
“Appo’s a great team,” added freshman goalkeeper Sydney Keld, who came up big with nine saves in goal, including two on penalty kicks. “We prepared really well for this game and both teams played hard. Neither one of us could score, though.”
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The Buccaneers, defending Division II champions, started out with plenty of runs to the net with shots that were either just missing or the net or falling into the hands of Kiyanna Gill, who stopped seven shots of her own. Jaguars coach Wes Kendle was pleased with the defensive effort.
“I think we recognized that we gave them too much room in the first half,” Kendle said, citing Rachel Cressler, Hannah Broomall, Elena Hilario and Ashley Hickman as defensive standouts. “We had a discussion about that halftime and cleaned it up.”
After a scoreless regulation period, the best chances for both sides came in the first overtime, when Keld stopped Erica Seiben cold on a penalty kick during injury time. Shortly after that, Caravel’s Macie Pennington fired a shot low and to the left side, but Gill dove and swiped it out of bounds to end the first overtime. Neither team came close in the second overtime and were happy to call it even.
“We were really fatigued at the end of the second overtime and it showed,” Brackin said.
“Caravel’s a great team and it was a great game on both sides,” Kendle said.