Wednesday, November 14, 2007

By Cory K. Doviak
NJS.com Editorial Director

Taylor Schulte's goal with four minutes to go in regulation got Ramapo even at 2-2.

OAKLAND -- Sophomore Becca Cooke spends most of the game in the back third. She is a defender whose job it is to keep the opposition from scoring. But when sticking with her mark means pushing up into the offensive third, Cooke is free to become a scoring option like she was in the second overtime of the Group 3 state semifinals on Tuesday night against West Morris Mendham.

“The beauty of it is that when Becca’s mark takes her up the field into the offensive third, she is the happiest person in the world,” said Ramapo head coach Paul Heenehan. “She was there against [Northern] Highlands [in the section final] and she was there again tonight.”

Cooke scored her scored her first varsity goal against Highlands last Thursday, but this one was much more important. Ramapo fell behind by two goals 13 minutes into the game, gradually regained the play and finally tied it with just four minutes left in regulation to force the extra sessions.

And 3:01 into the second overtime, Gen Cohen threw a ball in from the side to Cooke, who touched it once and then cracked it on an angle. The ball bent in from right to left and just cleared the outstretched hands of Mendham keeper Melanie Pierson for the goal that set off a celebration in the freezing fog that had settled over the field at Indian Hills High School.

Erin Graziano (right) scored just over six minutes into the game to give Mendham the lead.

Cooke’s goal gave Ramapo a 3-2 win and a spot in Saturday’s state final against Central Jersey champion Freehold Borough on Saturday at the College of New Jersey.

“It was throw in and Gen Cohen crossed it in. I took a touch and put it right over the goalie’s head. I just looked at the goal, looked at the goalie and put it right over,” said Cooke. “It feels great, but I could not have done it without my team. We do it all together.”

But before there were any overtime heroics, Ramapo needed to sort out its defense, which was uncharacteristically disjointed early in the game. The Green Raiders made a few mistakes in the back in the early going and two of those miscues ended up in the back of the net.

Just over six minutes into the game, Mendham’s Erin Graziano scored on a skip-header off a throw in from deep in the corner and only six minutes after that, Curtis Dovlyn pounced on a loose ball at the top of the area and deposited into the opposite corner to give the Patriots a surprising 2-0 lead.

While it looked like certain doom for Ramapo, Heenehan could see the seeds of a comeback growing in the minutes immediately after Mendham’s second goal despite the fact that the Green Raiders were still behind by two at halftime.

“If a team scores a goal and they physically outplay you to score it, or if a team scores a goal because you make mistakes, there is a huge difference. We made two huge mental mistakes in the back and, God bless them, give them all the credit in the world, they buried them and that was scary,” said Heenehan. “But for the next 15 to 18 minutes, we were down their throat. That gave me ammunition at halftime to sit them down and say ‘You know you can outplay them. You know you are going to get opportunities.”

Katie Weiderhold's goal on a header six minutes into the second half got Ramapo on the scoreboard.

Ramapo converted one of those opportunities just over five minutes into the second half when Katie Weiderhold headed in a cross from Sarah Halejian to get the Raiders to within 2-1.

The Raiders had an advantage in terms of depth as Heenehan substituted liberally, while Mendham had just three players on its bench and seemed to wear down in the second half as Ramapo kept pressing forward. But despite the fact that it allowed just two shots on goal while pressuring the Patriots’ net for the better part of the second 40 minutes, Ramapo still found itself trailing, 2-1, when Halejian was taken down a few yards outside the box on the right hand side.

That allowed Taylor Schulte to stand over a restart, and she hit a skidder that got through the wall and banked off the keeper’s right hand before ending up inside the opposite post and tying the game at 2-2.

“I’ve had a lot of opportunities and I am just so thankful to have put that one away,” said Schulte, Ramapo’s junior sweeper. “I was thinking about our whole season, how much we have gone through to be at this point. For our seniors, too -- for Allie [Maresca], Kristina [Russo] and Kat [Wolff] – it means a lot. I really, really wanted to get to that [state] final if it relied on me I had to get the job done.”

She did, and Ramapo is one of just 12 girls soccer teams in the state with a game left on its schedule.

“I am still a little amazed. I was ready for PKs, I really was,” said Heenehan. “But we’ll take it and get ready for Saturday.”

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