Only two Severna Park goals, split evenly across the halves, gave reprieve to the melee.
From the first minute of Severna Park’s eventual 2-0 win over Chesapeake, the Falcons’ turf transformed from girls soccer pitch to gladiator pit. No Falcon could so much as toe a ball without a Chesapeake girl colliding into her space, and vice versa. Opponents hit the ground together, just for another pair to share a fierce pursuit after the ball.
Shots on goal, scarce as they became, were no longer simple acts of a kick and a save. Cougars goalkeeper Ryleigh Smoot tackled and dove, and still, Falcons picked up any loose ball – any glimpse of weakness – and kept on the attack.
It was only ever going to be a low-scoring game.
“They’re a very good team that’s very well-coached and aggressive from top to bottom,” Severna Park coach Rick Stimpson said as his Falcons improved to 4-0. “We knew that was going to be the challenge today — having to match their physicality.”
Two of the four Falcons goal-scorers against South River on Tuesday gave an encore performance on Thursday. Junior Emma Lawrence couldn’t shake Chesapeake’s Gracie Asare-Dwamenah but for one brief blip. The Falcon juked left, loaded the ball on her foot and fired just out of reach of Smoot’s outstretched hands.
Izzy Burleson had to wait until the second half for her opening to appear.
“I was like, ‘This is my chance. This is my goal,’” she said. “Just take my chance. I feel like we became more determined after that to just lock the game in.”
The small, swift sophomore took part in the Falcons’ first-half tries, just to have them blocked against a seemingly unflappable wall of Cougars. When she took her shot in the 55th minute, it threaded through traffic and, like Lawrence’s, just beyond Smoot’s reach.
“You got to give it to them,” Chesapeake coach Kevin Keeter said as his team fell to 3-2. “Both of those were some really nice goals.”
A 2-0 defeat to last year’s undefeated Class 3A champions isn’t a cause for concern for Chesapeake. Ff anything, limiting Severna Park, which has piled 16 goals across four games already, is an achievement borne of a relentless defense. Nevertheless, the loss is the rotten cap on a fruitless week for the Cougars, who battled Crofton to overtime on Tuesday just to let the game-winning goal bounce off a defender’s shoulder onto a Cardinal’s waiting foot.
The root of both downfalls are the same: squandered opportunities.
By Tuesday’s second half, Severna Park’s stingy defense all but banned Chesapeake forwards from the box. But in the first half, Cougars strikers aimed three point-blank shots at the net. One popped directly into Falcons keeper Lily Diedrich’s hands. The other pair, including an early, wide-open attempt by junior Ella Cieri, soared through the football uprights.
“If either of those goes in, it’s a different game,” Keeter said.
Severna Park’s shot-to-goal ratio won’t be a season highlight, either. Stimpson reckons his ball-handlers could’ve used a little more patience, anticipated chances when they came and showed even more aggression around the box. Still, that’s what early September is for: figuring out what needs to be tweaked now, so that by October and November, mistakes are past lessons and not ongoing liabilities.
The intensity Chesapeake gave Severna Park wasn’t terribly different than what South River on Tuesday or Arundel last week met them with, or frankly what rival Broadneck will cook up next week. It’s nothing less than the Falcons need on the road back to states.
“A few more easier games early on would’ve been nice though,” Stimpson said. “Just to maybe see what we have; there were a lot of question marks early in the season. But every single player that’s stepped on the field has massively stepped up.”