The odds were all against us.  At this past Sunday’s MASC tournament, the CRU under 13 girls Jaguars had no regular goalie and only ten players for two out of our four games!  For the first game, the players had a 5:00am wakeup call and a long drive for the 8:00am game start.

During warm-ups, we were all wondering who would have the challenge of playing goalie placed upon them…until…Coach Tom McGuinness put Courtney Hicks in net as the Jaguars took on Bruno United under 13’s.  We ended up with a hard-fought win, 1-0, with a beautiful goal by Elly Lemons and an excellent job in goal by Courtney! 

CRU continued on their victory run with a great 5-0 win over BOCA Jr.’s, even though we played one man down.  Jenn Curtin lead the team with several saves as the volunteer goalie. The  scoring was done by me on a penalty kick , Alyssa Finnegan (2 goals) and Laurel Ayvazian (2 goals). 

Then came Game 3… Going into the game, the Jaguars were hoping for another win vs. the Mission under 13 squad and went with Alyssa Finnegan in net.  But it turned out that it was 0-0 until 6 minutes left in the game, when Jenn Curtin put CRU on top with her first goal of the season.  However, Mission came right back and scored with less than 2 minutes left to tie the score and send the game into a shootout.  CRU was unsuccessful in their four chances, but Mission put in 3 goals to win.  It was a devastating loss (shootouts are recorded as a tie, though).

In the fourth game, the Jaguars were looking to pick their heads up again, but it wouldn’t be easy. We were scheduled to play Berkshire United, a tough team two divisions higher in the league than us.  With two players back from a dance recital, it brought the squad up to 12 people and the CRU Jaguars took a 2-0 win!  Goals were scored by Elly Lemons and Alyssa Finnegan to pace the Jaguars. I volunteered to play goalie, although I am normally the sweeper and I registered 3 saves in the Jaguars 3rd shutout of the day.

The Jaguars completed the day with a final record of 3-0-1, and their record ended up among the top five teams in the tourney.  Here’s to a great overall day and hopefully this will carry over for the Jaguars as they travel out to Amherst MA on June 19^th and 20^th for our upcoming MAPLE qualification games!