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CANFIELD -- The West Branch Warriors and Canfield Cardinals girls' soccer teams are certainly no strangers to one another having met twice in the past two years. That familiarity helped the Cardinals to top the Warriors 2-1 in a defensive, tournament-type regular season meeting on Monday night.
"Honestly, it was pretty much what we expected tonight. We knew it was going to be a good game," Warriors head coach Cheryl Ficco. "Some of our girls have played with them coming up through the club phases, so they are familiar with them. It was a very competitive game for us."
"We weren't quite sure with Bri Thomas, one of their top players going down last week, how they were going to set up," Cardinals coach Phil Simone remarked. "We know a lot of their players and I have worked with some of their players when they were 11, 12 years old. So, I know them pretty well and it's typically a very close game."
The Warriors, who dropped to 8-2-2 on the season, had beaten the Cardinals in the regular season meeting last year, then fell to them in the regional semifinals. Two years ago, the Cardinals won both the regular season encounter and their District meeting to sweep the Warriors.
The 11-0-1 Cardinals are now on a six-game winning streak following a tie with Avonworth back at the beginning of the month. The victory also gave Cardinals head coach Phil Simone his 400th career victory.
"It's definitely a huge milestone," Simone said. "It ages you a little bit, dates you a little bit and shows you where you are at. To look back at all the teams and all the years and all the victories is just a pleasure."
"We knew it was a big game coming in and it was coach's 400th win, so we all wanted it so bad," Cardinals senior captain Hanna Wahib stated. "We came out and played very well."
The game was a defensive struggle for both teams as The Cardinals only generated six shots on goal while the Warriors had three. It wasn't until the 14:53 mark of the first half that the Cardinals finally broke through. Cardinals' standout forward Maci Toporcer was able to direct a kick through traffic and past Warrior's goal tender Zoe Sanders.
"Once we had the first goal then we had some momentum, which helped us keep going. Their defense played very well and we knew we had to get a couple goals," Wahib said.
"We wanted to emphasize the first 10 (minutes). We wanted to come out and I feel like we did a good job of that," Ficco said. "Not giving up any easy goals in the first 10 kind of helps with your mindset to be positive through the rest of the game."
A minute and a half later Cardinals senior Hanna Wahib was able to find the back of the net on a penalty kick. That goal came at the 13:17 mark and staked the Cardinals to a 2-0 advantage.
"The first goal that they got was honestly just miscommunication on our part," Ficco admitted. "The second one was an unfortunate handball. The goals didn't come too much from the run of play. They were, the first one an oddity, and the second an unfortunate handball in trying to clear the ball out of the box."
But the Warriors kept battling throughout the half and finally found a goal with just 51 seconds remaining in the first half. Sophia Gregory was able to power a corner kick past the Cardinal's goal-tender Lolo Padgett, giving them some momentum and cutting the deficit to 2-1.
Neither team could generate any offense in the second half as the defenses swarmed to the ball on every pass. Both teams only managed one shot on goal in the half.
The Warriors will need to regroup quickly as they have an important EBC game at Carrollton on Wednesday night in their next action. The Cardinals also return to the field on Wednesday when they host Warren Harding in SVC play.