Thunder take sting out of Seneca

By Daniel Nugent-Bowman

nuge0020@algonquincollege.com

Tamara den Hartigh’s goal in the 23rd minute proved to be all the women’s soccer team would need as the Thunder held off a late surge to beat the Seneca Sting 1-0.

Den Hartigh corralled a turnover from Sting keeper Elise Schubert and chipped the ball over her head and into the yawning cage to put the Thunder ahead.

The goal would be all the Algonquin Thunder could muster during a half in which they dominated play. Seneca’s best chance came on a shot from midfield.

Towards the end of the second half, the Thunder began to fizzle out, resulting in two good chances for the Sting. Keeper Melissa Urquhart had to be on her toes during a Seneca corner and free kick.

“The first half wasn’t so bad,” said Urquhart, “but then near the end when we were only up 1-0 and in the last minutes, they were really pressuring. That’s when it got to be a little more nervous.”

Thunder coach Garth Gittens also felt the tense moments at the end of the match.

“At 80 minutes we started to lose our legs, we seemed to lose our fitness,” he said. “That’ll happen in a hard fought game like that. We’ll work on that and keep going from there.”

Seneca assistant coach Dave Benning took over the coaching reigns for the game due to work commitments of head coach Deesh Bhattal. Even though his team got off to a slow start, Benning believes the Sting can now compete with the Thunder or anyone else in the league.

“I think they let the thought of Algonquin’s past affect them in the first half because it’s a young team,” he said. “I think Algonquin just capitalized on the mistake that we made. But I think in the second half we had the momentum. We had our chance to score on three occasions and didn’t capitalize.

“Algonquin’s a good team, yet they only capitalized once and that one time we gave the ball to them, our goalie was out of position and the ball was in the back of our net.”

Den Hartigh liked the way the team pulled through even with the lack of offense.

“It’s always hard when you only win by one,” she said. “But everyone worked hard and we held it together. Towards the end we gave up our composure. We need to keep going, but we held them off pretty good. We’ll start scoring more.”

Gittens attributed the narrow margin of victory to the quality of his opponents.

“The girls played awesome, they played really well. They had some lows during the game, but they played really well considering they just played the night before against a tough team in Durham and Seneca was really tough as well. It’s really good to get a tough game like that out of the way.

“I would have liked to have seen us capitalize when we had the advantage. We had opportunities to score … we’ll work on finishing in the coming weeks.”

Urquhart agreed with her coach.