Girls soccer: Elgin blanks Larkin
The final home game for the seniors on the Elgin girls soccer team couldn't have concluded any better on Tuesday night, especially for goalkeeper Hannah Erickson and forward Sofia Mari.
The Maroons edged out rival Larkin 1-0 in Upstate Eight River Division action. Mari scored the Maroons' only goal and Erickson was outstanding in the net with 6 huge saves.
"I had nine seniors out there who wanted to give it everything they had," Elgin coach Alicia Knoll said. "They came out and played extremely strong."
Mari's goal came on a scramble in front of the net just over 12 minutes into the game. It was her sixth goal of the season.
"It's one of those things where it's my last game here and I wanted to fight hard for every ball," Mari said. "The ball went to the middle and everyone was kind of playing around with it, so I just went after it. We have been working a lot on our offense to get ready for the playoffs. I think it has been getting better."
The one goal stood up the rest of the way for the Maroons in large part to the excellent play of Erickson in goal. Despite being just 5-foot-6 she showed her impressive range by leaping to stop a shot just under the crossbar by Larkin's Cristina Baeza early in the second half. Erickson made a similar play in the first half.
"Timing is everything," Erickson said. "I have had a couple of really good coaches that were shorter like me and they really helped me a lot on how to use my height to my advantage."
Erickson also came up big with a diving save when Larkin's Sami Moreno broke free down the left side with just over 15 minutes left to play.
"She is a really good player," Erickson said. "So I knew I had to get over and take away as much of the net I could. They have a lot of fast players, but I thought we did a good job of trying to take away their angles. This is an awesome win especially as a senior to end undefeated against them in my four years here."
The Maroons (10-7-4) have 3 wins and a tie in the regular season meetings against Larkin over the last 4 years Erickson has been on the team.
"She is always rock-solid back there," Knoll said. "You can always count on her to come up with big plays and show up every game ready to play at her best."
The Maroons have one more game before regionals while it was the regular season finale for Larkin (13-9,1-4).
"I hate this game because we always seem to get so hyped up for it that we lose our heads and start doing things we haven't done all year," Larkin coach Ken Hall said. "We just didn't play our game. We weren't able to generate a lot of chances. But you can't take anything away from them. They played really well have and they have a great goalkeeper. It's only one game and we have a week to go before the playoffs so we will be fine."