The Hamilton West girls soccer team hadn’t won a game in two years and West Windsor-Plainsboro South hadn’t played one in two years.
Both droughts ended Thursday night as visiting Hamilton took a 2-1 win over the Pirates on Mikayla Hall’s unassisted goal in the 12th minute of the second half.
It was the Hornets first victory since defeating Trenton Oct. 10, 2019, as they went 0-5 last year.
“Honestly it’s just like a good excitement,” Hall said. “There’s so much joy in winning after not having a good season last year and not having many games. It’s good to get back on the field, getting all together and having a good time.”
For head coach Staci Priestley it was her first win since 2018 as she missed 2019 due to maternity leave.
“It’s awesome,” Priestley said. “We’ve been working really hard in the off-season. After having a short season, we graduated 10 girls and had a couple seniors that didn’t come back. We knew it was a rebuilding year for us. We’re trying to work with new players who have ever been in the program before so it feels great to come out and get this W.”
For the Pirates, it felt great just to get on the field. WW-PS shut down fall sports last year due to COVID-19 and the Pirates had not played since Oct. 28, 2019.
“It was so nice,” said senior Lauren Morabito, one of the few returnees from two years ago. “We’ve all been away for so long. We worked hard this preseason so it’s nice to finally be back out there.
“Last year hurt so bad. Not having a junior season, not having our seniors. It was hard.”
The Pirates made their first shot-on-goal in 22 months count, as Aditi Negi lofted a ball from 20 yards out over goalie Isabella Celentano to give her team a 1-0 lead just 3:31 into the match.
Rather than wilt, Hamilton began to regain the play and start to attack.
“We always try to keep composure and we try to say ‘It’s OK, it’s zero-zero,” Hall said. “Since I’m the leader I try to calm them down, make sure we get or heads back in the game.”
After a scramble in front, sophomore Morgan Bressler shot one just wide of the open goal. Minutes later, freshman Ava Riley was taken down with the ball in the box, and Bressler calmly converted the penalty kick to tie it.
“Absolutely,” said Priestley when asked if the goal sparked her team. “But I had to remind them it’s still a tie game. Just because we scored you can’t get hyped up that this is our game. You still have to play another 40 minutes. They had to come out and do what they were expected to do and they certainly did that.”
They did indeed. After holding a 5-2 shot advantage in the first half, Hamilton outshot the Pirates 12-10 in the second and had several near misses thwarted by Jasmine Akman (11 saves). Celentano (10 saves) was equally tough and kept the game tied early in the second half when she came far out of the goal to block a shot by Priya Zalavadia, then handle the rebound shot from Alexis Contes.
“She’s amazing,” Hall said of the sophomore. “She has very good composure. We have faith in our goalie, we never doubted her one second in the game.”
The senior forward then made her keeper’s hard work pay off as she used her sprinter’s speed to score the game-winner on a breakaway.
“It bounced off a defender and I took advantage of it,” Hall said. “I wanted to try to put in my moves and take advantage of my speed around the defender, and take advantage of the goalie when she came
out. That brought a lot of joy to me. Sophomore year I got a few goals (nine) but I didn’t have much of a season last year. It was great to get another one.”
“We’ve been working so hard with her,” Priestley said. “She has so much speed and so much talent. She’s a little too fast for her footwork sometimes and the ball gets ahead of her. We’re really working with her to control the ball and be able to get the shot off. I was really proud she was able to finish there.”
She was also proud of her team’s first opening-day win in three years.
“Just having this momentum will give us a lot of confidence,” Priestley said. “We don’t usually have wins under our belts, so just the fact we can start off with a W will give us confidence.”
As for WW-PS, it did not play bad considering first-year coach Elisa Mastroianni is trying to get a whole new group the mesh. The Pirates committed at least 10 offsides infractions as they look to develop chemistry.
“There’s some kinks we have to work out but all in all we played pretty well,” Morabito said. “It will take us a few games to get back in the groove but we’re getting there.”
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