Swentesky rises as goal-keeper

The Lady Dogies faced two tough opponents last week on the soccer pitch, and though they dropped two conference matches against Douglas, 0-6, and against Rawlins, 0-2, the defensive line rose to the challenge when put to the test by these two squads. Head coach Cami Willyard was pleased with how her team stepped up their game and made the Lady Bearcats and Lady Outlaws fight for every point they got.

The fourth-ranked Lady ‘Cats came to town on Thursday, and brought with them a team filled with athletes and weapons that would ultimately prove too much for the Newcastle High School girls. However, Willyard’s defensive line and her goalkeeper, Christine Swentesky, held strong against the powerhouse through more than 40 minutes of play.

Swentesky gave a clinic on how to be a goal-keeper throughout the contest, finishing the game with 28 saves. She had at least three situations where she saved the ball, it bounced back to Douglas, then she’d save it again — and it was pretty incredible for fans and opponents alike to watch.

“That’s Christine’s type of game, because she just thrives on it,” Willyard said. “She loves pressure and they just loaded shots at her,
and it was a pretty phenomenal performance.”

Douglas hit the pitch and began to attack the goal aggressively. Despite getting off several shots on goal, the score was just 1-0 in their favor at the half-time break.

“If you would have told me that we’d only be down 1-0 at the half, I would have told you that you were crazy,” Willyard said, chuckling. “I was so darned proud of them through that first half, because Douglas ended up with five different girls score, which makes them super hard to defend.”

The Lady Dogies defended for most of the second half, and after going against the continued attacks by the Lady ‘Cats, they kind of ran out of gas — which Douglas used to get five more goals into the back of the net before time ticked off the clock.

“We were planning for that kind of game. We planned to just hunker down and defend and then from time to time get a counter attack,” Willyard said. “Douglas is a scary team. They have all the tools, they’re athletic, they’re aggressive, they’re strong, they have at least five girls who can finish so they are so hard to defend. But, I feel like we did a good job of not making it easy for them.”

Though they didn’t get a lot of opportunities on offense, Hailey Beastrom did get a corner kick that she hit off the post, and the Lady Dogies were able to execute a couple of runs to create some opportunities that had some promise to them.

On Saturday, the Lady Dogies made the long trek to Rawlins to take on the Lady Outlaws. Willyard admitted that she didn’t know a great deal about Rawlins prior to the game, given they didn’t attend the same early season tournament that Newcastle did, and their game against Buffalo got postponed.

“Last year they were pretty young with a lot of freshmen and sophomores and they only lost a couple of players to graduation,” Willyard said. “So I had a pretty good idea what we’d see from them.”

Willyard was ready for a similar style of play to Douglas but without the athleticism of the Bearcats. Through the first 10 minutes of the game, it was a pretty evenly matched contest with both teams creating a few opportunities here and there. Then both teams were held scoreless for the remainder of the first half.

“I definitely liked our chances going into halftime at 0-0,” Willyard said. “We didn’t have as many opportunities as they did, but I felt like we were really strong defensively.”

Willyard admitted that she considered pulling Swentesky out of the goal for a little bit to give her team an offensive spark, but opted to leave her as keeper given that so far this season, the start of the second half has been challenging for her team.

Although Newcastle started out strong like they had played in the first half, Rawlins was able to score twice, the first with 16 minutes left to play and the second just a minute later.

“It was just one of those things where we were a little bit tired,” Willyard said. “But soccer is one of those games where if you are a little unfocused, the other team is going to take advantage of that, and we just had a couple of minutes where we
let down.”

Without those two minutes, Willyard felt that the contest would have ended with a 0-0 tie.

“Overall, I was really proud of how the girls played,” Willyard said. “For the most part, we were two pretty evenly matched teams.”

This week will be a rematch from the first weekend of the season as the Lady Dogies host the Torrington Trailblazers on Thursday with games starting at 4 p.m. Then, on Saturday, Newcastle will travel to Buffalo to take on the Lady Bison.

“I like our chances in both games this week,” Willyard said. “We won’t overlook Torrington at all, and with our defense I feel like we can pull one out against Buffalo, too.”