News for the Week of July 9, 2012

Program Notes for the Week of 7/9/2012:

Shorepal Meeting:
Mark your calendars - the next Shorepal meeting will be held on Tuesday July 10th at 7:30 p.m. at the Old Firehouse at the corner of Lake Rd. and Rt.83. We will be making our final plans for the Alumni game and reviewing the rest of the summer's events. Hope to see you there!


Alumni Game:
The annual Alumni Game & Picnic will be held on Saturday July 14th at 3:00 p.m. at Walker Road Park. We will start play around 3:00 p.m. with food and fellowship to follow. Let any Alumni you run across know about this year's game and have them rsvp with shirt size to sixkennys@oh.rr.com.


20th Anniversary of Shoregal Soccer:
This season we will celebrate 20 years of Shoregal soccer. That is a long time and we have had a lot of terrific girls pass through our program over the years who have set the bar high for future generations. Each week, we are going to highlight some of the important games and important people to the program over these last 20 years.

This week we will feature the 2006 Regional Semi-final game:

The Shoregals first trip to the Regional tournament would, of course, be one of the biggest games in program history.   This game would pit the Shoregals against Toledo powerhouse St. Ursula Academy.  This would be another emotionally charged game as the death of Gino Strippoli hung over the team.  As we wrote about in a previous installment longtime youth coach, referee, and administrator Gino Strippoli had died of an heart attack during the District championship game the previous Saturday.  His funeral and burial was held on the day of the game and the girls team was excused from classes to attend the funeral.  An event of this magnitude for teenage girls definitely affected their focus on the game and created a strange vibe on the day.  On the lighter side, the athletic dept. provided a charter bus for them to ride to the game which took place in Ashland.  This was a surprise to the girls and quite a change from the normal yellow school bus.

As to the game itself, as we have written about previously, Avon Lake was a decided underdog in this game as it had been all through the playoffs.  The team had finished the season with a .500 record and had started the season 0-4.  But the team had gotten hot in the playoffs and won all four of its games by shutting out its opponent in each game.  Not one goal given up in the playoffs and this was done with a Freshman goalie in Bridget Lyons.  In the first half, the game was very evenly matched as the Shoregals were competitive with heavily favored St. Ursula.  About midway through the first half, a St. Ursula player found some open space on the right side of the Avon Lake defense about 30 yards out from goal and sent a rocket towards the AL goal which just grazed off the hands of Lyons and into the back of the net.  St. Ursula carried that 1-0 lead into halftime.  In the second half, the Shoregals came out with a purpose.  Head coach Caleb Reutter made some adjustments at half time to turn the Shoregals into a more attacking offensive style. The girls really started to take the game to St. Ursula and created a number of great scoring opportunities, but just could not get the finish that they needed and fell by the 1-0 score.  This was a game that they definitely could have won and maybe if the emotional events of the day had been different a more focused team would have been on the field that day.  Still a great season for the girls as they ended up 10-7-3 and gave up only that one long goal during the playoffs.  The game ended on a down note as with just a few minutes remaining a St. Ursula player hit our Chrissy Ward so hard after a play that it knocked her out of bounds and gave her a concussion.  She literally flew through the air and landed on her head and neck.  The game had to be stopped for about 20 mins. as an ambulance came to take Chrissy to the hospital.  She ended up with both the concession and a neck brace.  A rough initiation for the Shoregals to the world of Regional play, but we would love to get back there again and this time win that game!