On Tuesday, September 24, the girls soccer team faced off against Francis Lewis High School. With three of the team’s starters, senior Nicole Bielecki, sophomore Ivanka Juran, and sophomore Kristine Guillaume, injured, the Hawks started off at a major disadvantage, which translated into an embarrassing 11 to nothing loss.
In an attempt to compensate for the loss of the injured players, Coach Vaselios Sioukas switched up his strategy by changing the positions of some of his players. One such switch involved senior Athina Mihaliadis. Originally a sweeper on defense, Coach Sioukas put her in as a midfielder. Without Athina’s presence on the defensive side, along with the team’s lack of communication, THHS was scored on eleven times.
At halftime, the score was 7 to 0 in favor of Francis Lewis. Although the first half was indubitably not a happy one, there were some silver linings. Sophomore goalie Hallee Pell Browne made a couple of great saves, while the team made some valiant attempts to score.
Principal Barbetta came to the game to support the girls team. Coach Sioukas said to him, “We’ve had better days,” to which Mr. Barbetta replied, “It’s okay coach, I know, we all have those off days.”
In the second half the girls tried to get out of their “funk”, as Coach Sioukas called it, but Francis Lewis was relentless in their scoring frenzy. It is generally accepted, across all sports, that if a team has too much of a lead, the coach will substitute his starters for his bench players, both in a graceful show of sportsmanship as well as in a way to expose the rest of his team to more playing time. Francis Lewis ignored that social norm, choosing to continue its fierce attempt to make goal after goal.
It wasn’t until Francis Lewis’s eleventh goal that the referees declared that the game was over, ending it a couple minutes before it would have officially ended.
The team’s next game is Friday, September 27, at Kissena Park, where they will try to redeem themselves.
