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Mount Tabor nips East Forsyth in OT
Spartans grab 2-1 win in 4-A soccer playoffs
Journal Photo by Bruce Chapman
Senior Amanda Milligan of Mount Tabor heads a goal past East Forsyth’s Christie Gillespie (5) in overtime.
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Published: May 14, 2008
KERNERSVILLE - Amanda Milligan scored two goals in the first four minutes of overtime and Mount Tabor outlasted East Forsyth for a 2-1 victory in a third-round game of the Class 4-A playoffs.
Milligan, a senior, sandwiched her two loose-ball goals around a timely counterattack goal from East Forsyth, which entered the match with the No. 3 ranking in the N.C. Soccer Coaches Association poll and having allowed only one goal in its past eight matches.
East, a semifinalist last spring, finished 19-2-1. Mount Tabor, winner of eight straight, moved to 17-4-1 and will take on the winner of the Matthews Weddington-North Mecklenburg winner later this week.
"We expected exactly this kind of game," said Coach Keith Donnelly of Mount Tabor, whose team was knocked out by East in the third round last year. "The last few years its come down to this in the playoffs and it always seems to be a one-goal game. It was a crazy game."
The Spartans and Eagles never gave themselves any great chances to score in the first half, but things heated up in the second half, in terms of scoring opportunities and physical play. Each team drew two yellow cards in the second half, and Jackie Stewart of East received two and was disqualified with 20 minutes left.
But the first goal didn't come until the first of two 10-minute overtime periods. Kabler Colhoun of Mount Tabor took the ball down the right side on the East end and sent a hard, low cross toward the middle, where Carson Williams of East deflected it into the air. Milligan, positioned perfectly inside the box, headed the deflection into the lower-right corner.
But 20 seconds later, before the Spartans stopped celebrating, East banged the ball down the center of the field and Ashley Alderin-Fleagle, East's big forward, won a footrace to the ball with keeper Andrea Ritchie of Mount Tabor and with a sliding kick tied the score at 1-1.
Two minutes later, Mount Tabor scored the winner.
Mary Reinhardt of the Mount Tabor rifled a shot from 18 yards that hit the crossbar and bounced away on the right side of the field, where Milligan ran to it and collected it. She then turned and chipped a shot over a charging East defender and the ball went into the left side of the goal.
"I saw it battling around and I was going to kick it in no matter how ugly it looked," Milligan said. "At this point, it doesn't matter, it just matters that it goes in. There was a girl in front of me and I just chipped it over her head. The goalie might have been out of position and I slid after that and I didn't see it until it was in the goal."
Donnelly said: "Amanda did a great job of tracking it down. She never quit. That was a real coach's goal because it would have been very easy to kind of stop and let that one go out of bounds, but she was all over it."
With stopper Hillary McPhatton and Ritchie doing a number on East's offense, particularly on the long throw-ins from Williams, Mount Tabor finished with more of the dangerous shots and out-shot the Eagles 9-8. Kristin Alderine-Fleagle, East's keeper, finished with six saves.
East, which was 14-0-1 in its previous 15 games, had beaten Mount Tabor twice early in the season, the second time on penalty kicks.
"You flip a coin when you play Tabor in the playoffs and all credit to Keith and those girls," Coach Chad Lorentz of East said. "The team that deserved to win the game won the game. They beat us in every facet of the game, they were composed, they worked the ball around nicely; they defended us well and caused us all kinds of problems. They won every ball when it was a 50-50 ball. For whatever reason in this matchup it always seems like the team that is the favorite … it doesn't work out."
■ Mason Linker can be reached at mlinker@wsjournal.com.
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