BEVERLY HILLS, Mich. -- No matter the sport, state tournament time is when high school coaches expect their seniors to step up and lead the team to victory.
On Tuesday night at Detroit Country Day, Brooke Bobowski did just that for the Warren Regina girls soccer team.
As the team’s lone senior, Bobowski literally had the game on her foot as she stepped up to take the sixth attempt of the shootout for No. 8-ranked Regina. Locked in a 1-1 tie against No. 9-ranked Pontiac Notre Dame Prep and after going through the first five rounds of the shootout with each team scoring, it came down to Bobowski as the Fighting Irish had already missed off the crossbar on its sixth attempt.
“I definitely knew I had to take this win,” Bobowski said. “Not only for me, but for the rest of my team. We fought hard all game and I wasn’t going to let it end (with a loss).”
After Bobowski set up the ball from 10 yards away before her attempt, she had the idea to shoot it low and hard to try and get it past Notre Dame Prep goalie Leila Mains.
As she planned, Bobowski let it rip and shot it toward the bottom left corner from her viewpoint. However, Mains dove for the ball and got her hand on it.
Thankfully for Regina, Bobowski shot still had enough power on it to find its way into the back of the net.
“I just saw it and life stopped,” Bobowski said. “It was a hell of a moment.”
Immediately, Bobowski fell to her knees in celebration as her Regina teammates swarmed the field to celebrate the 2-1 victory and a trip to Thursday’s Division 3 region championship game against No. 6 Flint Powers Catholic at Detroit Country Day.
“It means a lot to me,” Bobowski said. “Obviously, we haven’t gotten there (to the region finals) before in the past few years I’ve been playing. We have a lot of talent and a lot of skill going into this game and I think after what just happened, we have the confidence to go further.”
Despite the big moment, Regina coach Stefano Moraccini knew his lone senior was ready to step up in the spotlight.
“It’s all about feel, you know?” Moraccini said. “How the kids feel and if they’re confident enough and not confident. She just didn’t feel it being one of the first five. When the sixth one came around, she goes, ‘I got ya.’ I’m like, ‘Alright, go ahead.’”
Regina goalie Sabrina Kiryakoza made two saves in the shootout, stopping the first and third Notre Dame Prep shooters. After she let in the fourth and fifth shots, Regina got the break it needed when Shanna White had Kiryakoza beat but bounced the shot away off the crossbar.
“I was going the other way and… I was just eternally grateful that it hit it.”
When Bobowski stepped up with a chance to win it, Kiryakoza was off to the side with her hands up to her face, bracing herself for a moment Regina had been waiting for.
“The confidence I have in my team is unbelievable,” Kiryakoza said. “I believed every single one of them would make a PK no matter what. During practice, no matter what, coach Stefano always made us take PKs in the last 10 minutes in cased we’d go into overtime. I knew when Brooke was shooting on me that that goal was going in.”
Bobowski’s goal ended a well-played game where each team gave up goals in regulation off corner kicks that each wanted another chance to defend again.
Entering the second half in a 0-0 tie, it was Regina drawing first blood with 26:37 to play thanks to Angelina Moraccini sending a corner kick into the box that Avery Zdankiewicz kicked in at point-blank range.
The lead was short lived, however, as Notre Dame Prep answered six minutes later when Emily Teolis netted a goal after the ball pinballed around in the box after a corner kick.
“Angelina put it right on the foot of Zdankiewicz and she buried it right in the back of the net,” Stefano Moraccini said. “Unfortunately, we conceded a corner of here. Had we not conceded that corner, maybe we don’t go into PKs… There was a missed mark on the back side there, but nonetheless, I’m proud of my girls.”
Notre Dame Prep started the game with numerous chances but shots either went just wide or were saved by Kiryakoza.
“Yeah, we left goals on the field today,” said Notre Dame Prep coach Jim Stachura. “We had plenty of opportunities to create. I mean, we had about 7,000 throw-ins and we played too slow on throw-ins. We served the ball in bad spots. We talked about it in the beginning of the game today: to win the game, we needed to win the box and we needed to win the second ball that they miscleared. They miscleared a bunch of them to us for corners, but we just didn’t get the job done on corners. We gave away a corner which is not something we want to do.
Notre Dame Prep was also missing one of its main targets up front in Mary Timko. Despite the loss, Notre Dame Prep kept creating chances, but those opportunities just wouldn’t materialize the way it had hoped.
“Sad for my girls,” Stachura said. “I thought they battled really hard. They played pretty well today.”
In the shootout, Adriana Lorenz, Alex Williams and Catherine Jesena each scored for the Irish. For the Saddlelites, Zdankiewicz opened the scoring in the shootout while Maddy Mlynarek and Sabrina Sokol also scored in the first five rounds.
Both Mains and Kiryakoza made great saves in the shootout for their respective teams to force things into a sixth round.
“Sabrina (Kiryakoza) is the best goalie I’ve ever known,” Bobowski said. “She’s the superhero of our team. Without her, we would never be this far. Huge shoutout to her. She’s so confident, she controls the back for us and she knows what she’s doing. Sabrina is the best goalie I’ve ever met.”
Adding a little sweetness to the win for Regina is the fact that it made up for its loss to Notre Dame Prep in the region semifinals last year. In fact, it was Notre Dame Prep that had the 2-1 win in a shootout last year on the same field.
“I’m just really happy that it was me who could secure the win for the rest of my team,” Bobowski said.
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