By TIFFANY RAZZANO
With victory on their minds, the team battled furiously against Marcellus High School, which made the trek from Syracuse to Percy Raynor Park in Setauket. Still, despite the Lady Cyclones' efforts and the fact that they vastly outshot their opponents, most of the game remained scoreless.
Then something happened that would change the course of South Side High School girls' soccer forever: Junior fullback Mary Egan, who had scored only two other goals that season, converted a penalty kick with just six minutes
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remaining. This game-winning goal clinched the team's first New York state championship, paving the way for the school's 20-year legacy as a girls' soccer powerhouse.
"At the beginning of the season, our goal was to win the state, and to do it in the last few minutes of the game on a free kick was incredible," said Amy Sherlock, who at the time was a junior on the team.
In the years that followed, South Side won 12 more state championships, said Michael Heller, the athletic director for the Rockville Centre School District. In fact, there were only two years the team didn't make it to the final four at the state tournament.
At the time of that first state championship win, girls' soccer had only been in place at South Side since 1981. But the program grew rapidly, as the team made a name for itself on Long Island by making several appearances in the Nassau County championships, and taking home the title in 1984.
In 1986, South Side made it to the state competition, losing to Pittsford Mendon 1-0 in the semifinals. At the beginning of the 1987 season, team members knew there was no way they were going to let the state title slip through their fingers again. "We definitely felt robbed after the 1986 loss, but that's the way soccer goes sometimes," said Dina Grossman Case, who was a senior on the 1987 team. "It is such a low-scoring game and you always have to capitalize on your opportunities. With that devastating loss still fresh in our minds, I think it helped motivate us to a higher level, and we were not going to accept anything less than winning it all in '87."
Many of the players from that 1987 team attribute much of the program's long-term success to the strength of the Rockville Centre Soccer Club. Jennifer Livingstone, a senior on the 1987 South Side team, calls the club "the breeding and development ground for soccer" at the high school. "Since many of us started playing together on club teams as early as kindergarten and elementary school, by the time we reached high school we were already experienced players with a familiarity for each other's abilities," she said. "Rockville Centre's status as a soccer powerhouse is attributed to the efforts and infrastructure which were established by the soccer club more than 30 years ago. Every player, coach and parent along the way helped make this program the tremendous success it is today."
"I would like to think the 12 subsequent state championship wins were because of us setting the stage somehow too," said Jennifer Siddons DiLella, who was then a senior on the team. "In reality, the success most likely has to do with the fact that the town has been smart enough to take the momentum from that '87 win and channel it back into program development."
Another factor in the program's early success was its first coach, Bob Bigelow, whom Heller calls the "architect" of the program. A basketball coach by training, Bigelow knew little about the sport when he became the girls' soccer coach in 1981. But he devoted himself to the team, learning as he went, studying hours of tapes and bringing the girls pages of notes.
The majority of the 1987 championship team came back to Rockville Centre on Sept. 7 to be honored on the twentieth anniversary of its title, as well as to celebrate the kickoff of both South Side's and the soccer club's seasons. "I was a bit amazed by the sheer number of people at the game," said Valerie Thompson, who was a senior goalkeeper in 1987. She added that many of the players were impressed by the fields at the Dean Skelos Sports Complex.
As the Lady Cyclones appear poised to defend their 2006 state championship - retaining many of the key players from last year and easily defeating Island Trees 4-0 in their first match - it's obvious that the legacy is far from over. "There were about a thousand people at that kickoff ceremony two weeks ago, half of which were young girls who hoped to hold one of the starting positions some day," DiLella said. "That was exciting to see, even if they never win another state championship again."
"The high school players set a good example," said Carly Roman, a member of the U-14 Liberty of the Rockville Centre Soccer Club. "It gets me excited about playing on the high school team."
Sasha Reiber, a senior on this year's team, said the girls are ready to go, with their minds set on winning. "We're going to come out and dominate," she said before the Sept. 7 game. "We're pumped for it."
Though this year's team will lose 14 seniors next year, Heller is not worried, as the pool of soccer talent in the village is deep. "We've been in this position before ,and every time we've lost a good number of graduating seniors, it always looks like we'll be in rebuilding mode, but we've never really been in a down period," he said. "There's an equal balance on the roster in terms of grade level. As soon as we graduate seniors, the lower classmen are ready to move up."
Comments? TRazzano@liherald.com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 221.
