Cardinal Newman lost to St. Joseph's 2-3 after overtime and penalty kicks (which seemed to go on forever!!). It was a great matchup, with the two teams fairly even in skill and conditioning. What was amazing was that CN used their back-up keeper for the PK's and she even made on of the PKs that went in! (Their primary keeper is fantastic but, as a 7th grader, she needs more experience in crunch situations before she can handle a shoot-out at the varsity level.)
As a CN parent (who is also a certified indoor soccer referee and married to a high school referee), I must say that the referees left a lot to be desired. There was a lot of over-the-back moves and flat-out pushing that was ignored. The CN players are way to polite to push back (plus they have not been coached to play like that).
This brings up the ugly topic of penalty kicks being a crappy way to win or lose a soccer games. Any comments?
