Friday, January 24, 2025
North Shore’s girls’ soccer team headed into its mid-October match against Plainedge unbeaten in conference play at 5-0-1. But posting an unbeaten record was not the aim for these Vikings.
The Vikings lost that day to Plainedge and dropped two of their last three conference games, including a regular-season finale loss to Seaford Monday that didn’t matter in the standings .
North Shore had already gained the No. 1 playoff seed and won the regular-season Conference 1 AB title with a 7-2-1 clip.
Coach Lauren Gotta hopes that Plainedge loss was the wakeup call.
“It was one of those good losses we needed to have as a reality check, that work still needs to be done,’’ Gotta said. “They didn’t play well and got complacent. I’m not the coach who wants to go undefeated. That’s not my style. I want the kids to feel what it means to lose and learn from it. It couldn’t have happened at a better time right before the playoffs.’’
And now the playoffs are here. North Shore (9-5-2 overall), which advanced to the Nassau Class A semifinals last season, will open its first-round match Monday at home versus Mineola. The county final is set for Nov. 7 at 5 p.m. at Cold Spring Harbor.
“The loss gave us some more motivation for the post-season,’’ senior tri-captain centerback Ally Basile said. “Losing to that team gave us more excitement and drive that no game will be easy for us. We need to play simple for the whole 80 minutes. Sometimes we have that time of the game we break down a little. Once the playoffs comes, we’re going to bring it for the full 80 minutes and do very well. The coaching staff has prepared us really well for the playoffs.’’
The boon for these Vikings, who advanced to the county semifinals last year, is they have an array of goal-scorers.
“There’s not one star player that really carries the team,’’ Basile said. “Everyone is contributing and doing the little parts to make the full team.’’
Leading the scoring pack are Sam DiBenedetto with 13 goals, 2 assists while Crystal Knoell and Erin Lily la Rosa each had 7 goals. Knoell had 5 assists and LaRosa 4 assists.
“The thing with our attacking line is it’s not just one or two kids,’’ Gotta said. “We attack with five kids. We really try to work on a build-up. That’s why we have so many goal-scorers. They share the wealth. When they play off each other, they’re so difficult to stop but sometimes we get into phases we forget we have to play with each other.’’
Gotta has been enthused with the offensive emergence of freshman Kashvi Bhogadij, who started the season as a defender. With her speed and foot skills, she was moved up to the front to add extra juice.
Meanwhile, sophomore goalkeeper Charlotte Healy, in her first season as starter, has held down the fort. It’s a well-rounded soccer club along the shores of Hempstead Harbor.
And Basile is the glue. “I try to do the little things,’’ said Basile, who will play lacrosse at St. Francis. University. “I don’t score much because I’m a centerback. But our team plays together and tries to feed each other the ball.’’
Losing two of the last three games usually isn’t a good momentum boost entering the playoffs but Gotta has turned it into a positive. “We’ve become more motivated,’’ Basile said.
“We’re still a work in progress,’’ Gotta said. “We’re typical North Shore kids, We’ve come a long way. We started slow and picked it up the rest of the way. We really learned how to play the system we gave them.’’
