Sunday, June 12, 2011

By Rich Barton
NJS.com Staff Writer

Sally Jentis scored the final two goals of the game to complete Ridgewood's comeback and its second straight T of C title with a 10-9 win over Moorestown on Saturday at Rutgers.

PISCATAWAY – Back in the beginning of May, Ridgewood standout Sally Jentis’ senior year could not have been going any better. Her team was ranked number one in the state, she was among the team leaders in scoring, and she already had signed a scholarship to play next year at the University of Florida. Then all of that seemed to come crashing down as she was diagnosed with mononucleosis and doctors told her that there was a possibility that she could miss the remainder of her senior season.

Jentis was not about to let that happen and set her sights on not only getting back on the field, but letting all the frustrations from the past month go. All she wanted was to have that feeling of celebrating a championship with her teammates one last time. In just her third game back from her bout with mono, Jentis made up for it and then some by coming up huge down the stretch in the biggest game of her life.

Late in the second half of Saturday’s Tournament of Champions final against perennial powerhouse Moorestown, Jentis took a feed from Kelci Smesko to tie the game at 9. The Florida-bound Jentis then spun around a defender and scored with 2:44 to play to give Ridgewood its first and only lead of the game as the Maroons won their second straight Tournament of Champions title with a thrilling 10-9 victory at Yurcak Field on the campus of Rutgers University.

Goalkeeper Isabel Sipple and the Ridgewood defense held Moorestown scoreless over the final 10-plus minutes.

“I can’t believe this all played out the way it did and it couldn’t have ended any better,” said Jentis. “We’ve been down before in the state tournament and we were again today, but we were never nervous. We all believed in each other and we knew we would find a way to get it done.”

In the Group 4 final against Hillsborough and then again in the Tournament of Champions semifinals against Chatham, the Maroons quickly fell behind and they did again yesterday. Moorestown’s leading scorer Stephanie Toy got the Quakers on the board first and they led 2-0 before Smesko shot through traffic to tie the game at 2.

The rest of the first half went back and forth with Moorestown taking the lead, only to see Richmond-bound Jess Miller tie the game at 3 and again at 4 for Ridgewood. The Quakers then slowed the game down over the final nine minutes of the first half and the strategy worked. Nikki Shapiro scored the 100th goal of her career on a free position and then fed Carly Taglienti in front for a goal with 46 seconds left in the half to give the Quakers all the momentum heading into halftime with a 6-4 lead.

“I thought we were right where we wanted to be, but we couldn’t build on that momentum,” said Moorestown head coach Deanna Knobloch. “When you play a team like a Ridgewood, you have to take advantage of all of your opportunities. We left some goals out there and it came back to bite us.”

The lead was still two when Jentis finally got going. She scored unassisted then Smesko slithered through a double team and bounced in a shot while falling down to tie the game at 7 with 14:26 to play.

It looked like the Quakers had weathered the storm and were about to pull away when Toy drew a trio of defenders from behind the net and slipped a pass to a wide-open Nikki McMonagle, who scored easily for her second goal of the game to make it 9-7 Moorestown with 10:31 to play. Just when hope was slipping away the Ridgewood defense, especially goaltender Isabel Sipple came up huge. They held the Quakers scoreless over the final 10:31 and in turn, gave their offense a chance to win at the end.

Ridgewood celebrated its second straight T of C title.

“The biggest key to the entire game is that we got key stops and forced some crucial turnovers over the final 10 minutes,” said Ridgewood head coach Karla Mixon. “If we kept trying to chase them, we were eventually going to run out of time. We have showed that we can be resilient in pressure situations and we did it again today.”

Ridgewood’s Lauren Beausoleil scored on her only shot of the second half off a feed from Lindsay Weiner to cut the lead to 9-8 with 7:19 to play. Then on the most crucial play of the game, Ridgewood had turned the ball over behind the Quakers’ net only to be bailed out by a heads-up play from Smesko. She never allowed them to clear the ball from their defensive third and forced a turnover herself. The sensational junior, already committed to Duke, then drew two defenders as she raced towards the net. She hit Jentis with a pass on the back post and Jentis put it in the back of the net to tie the game at 9 with 5:54 to play.

It was the fifth time that the Maroons had tied the game, but this time they would finally get over the hump and pull ahead. On essentially a clear-out play, they spread out and gave Jentis the ball at the top. She drove hard, then used a spin move to create space and fired a shot through the five-hole of Moorestown’s All-American goaltender Bridget Bianco (who will play for NCAA champion Northwestern next year) to give Ridgewood its first lead, 10-9, with 2:44 to play.

“If there was one person I wanted to score that goal, it was Sally,” added Mixon. “I know it’s been tough for her this year and she has been through so much just to get back on the field. Today she had a fantastic second half and gave us a lift when needed it. She is such a tough player to stop one-on-one and we tried to isolate her as often as possible. It was great to finally take a lead, but there was still plenty of time left.”

Ridgewood finished the season with a 23-1 record.

At that point, the skies opened up and it started to downpour. Moorestown had possession for the final minute and a half and got off a pair of shots, only to be turned away by Sipple both times. Shapiro tried to drive through the Maroons’ defense with 30 seconds to go, but the ball was knocked away. Ridgewood’s Kaitlin Concilio picked up the loose ball and fed Smesko, who ran out the final 15 seconds as the horn sounded and the Ridgewood bench poured onto the field to mob Sipple. It seemed poetic that the horn continued to go off, but it was the lightning detection system. It did not even phase the elated Ridgewood team, which was too busy hugging and crying tears of joy to realize that it had to get off the field.

“This is exactly how we saw our season ending and it’s unreal that our dream came true the way it did,” said Sipple. “I mean for us to win the T of C back-to-back and then beat Moorestown by a goal in my senior year, I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.”

Smesko had a game-high four goals, while Jentis and Miller each had three for Ridgewood, which finished the season with a 23-1 record with its only loss coming against national power St. Anthony’s (NY). Sipple came up big in the second half, making nine of her 11 saves, including seven in the final 8:45.

Taglienti, McMonagle, and Lindsay Goldblatt each had two goals and Bianco finished with eight saves for Moorestown (22-4).

For Jentis and Ridgewood, their quest is finally complete. Even after winning the T of C title last year, there were some naysayers that Ridgewood was the benefit of good fortune because Moorestown got upset in the Group 3 final and the Maroons got a free run to the championship. Now Ridgewood has proved it is not only no fluke, but with two victories over Moorestown this year and two straight T of C titles it has become the new sheriff in town and the preeminent girls’ lacrosse program in New Jersey.

“For our senior class, we wanted to leave our legacy with a championship and now we have two, it’s amazing,” said Jentis. “We didn’t want to be a one-hit wonder and have people think we were a fluke last year. Moorestown is a great team, but it’s a team we had already beaten so we had the confidence to do it again. As hard it was for me personally this season, I would do it all over again as long as it ended like this. It’s a feeling none of us will ever forget.”

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