Glenside - Six times in the second half of yesterday's Catholic League field hockey championship, Archbishop Carroll had a chance to break a tie game with a corner play. Six straight times, they failed to convert.
On the seventh, that finally changed.
Kerri Byrne's goal with 8:52 remaining broke a 35-minute stalemate and Kim Zamojcin scored twice to lift Archbishop Carroll to a 3-1 win over Cardinal O'Hara at Arcadia University. The win avenged the Patriots' only league loss of the season, a 2-1 defeat at the hands of the Lions in the regular-season finale, and spoiled the upstart O'Hara team's dream of a perfect Catholic League season.
"We figured that if you keep doing it, pretty soon it's going to go in," Archbishop Carroll coach Suzie Gennaro said of her team's numerous corner opportunities. "Our plan was to follow through on every shot, and definitely rush every ball near that goal cage."
After six failures to convert, including five in a row kept out of the goal by O'Hara netminder Moire Boston, Zamojcin set up for the seventh and deciding corner. Her pass found the stick of Laura Comly, who put it on goal and, in the ensuing traffic, Byrne snuck through and tipped the ball into the cage to break a 1-1 tie.
"We had a lot of corners," said a giddy and almost speechless Byrne. "Normally, we're not that great at corners, but today we had a lot of chances and we were pretty good on them."
The hard-charging attitude displayed in their second-half scoring opportunities was a microcosm of the Patriots' entire effort in the championship game. Less than eight minutes into the game, Cardinal O'Hara was on the board courtesy of a Jenna Moran goal. The early deficit added pressure, especially considering the Patriots' previous loss to the Lions, but Zamojcin said she was still confident her teammates could roar back.
"My heart dropped a little bit on that one," said Zamojcin, who along with Byrne was named to the Catholic League First Team after the game. "But, we came back from there, tied it up, and I think we all got a little fired up from that and just kept pushing and pushing to get more goals."
The constant offensive pressure paid off for Zamojcin with 14:46 left in the first half, as she spotted a loose ball near the cage and slammed it past Boston to knot the game up at 1-1 heading into the half.
"I think that goal changed everything," she said. "Before that, we were thinking, 'We're down one, we need two to get up,' and after that, we knew we were in it and only needed one to win it."
While the first half was played very evenly, the Patriots came out and followed Gennaro's strategy of setting a physical, frenetic pace and putting as much pressure as they could on a Lions defense that had given Archbishop Carroll fits in their first meeting.
"Last time, we really struggled with their defense," Gennaro said. "This time, the plan was to really play stick to stick, and we've worked the last two weeks on how to spread out that defense and really follow through in the circle, and the girls just did a great job with that today."
Archbishop Carroll's relentless work on offense kept Cardinal O'Hara's defenders back on their heels, and just five minutes after Byrne broke the 1-1 tie, Zamojcin broke the game wide open. The ball found it's way to Megan McKee's stick, and just as her shot seemed destined to die just in front of the goal line, Zamojcin reached desperately and was able to poke the ball into the back of the cage to set off the celebration on the Patriots' sideline.
"I could see that one coming in and I thought, 'Oh my God, we have to get this,'" Zamojcin said. "I kept pushing and pushing and I saw Megan shoot, and I thought it was going to go over the line so I just dove for it and said 'This better go in.'"
Zamojcin's second goal of the day set off pandemonium on the Patriots' sideline, as players, students and parents counted down the final minutes to a league title. As the final seconds ticked away, the entire Archbishop Carroll contingent stormed the field in a celebration complete with a chilling ice water shower for the victorious coach.
"I think that these girls are just so determined," Gennaro said while drying herself off with a blanket. "And when O'Hara scored first, that gave us the energy to come on back and just take it back. I told them at halftime to go out and take the game, and that's what they did. They were not leaving today without that trophy."