For the second consecutive year, the game featuring the best boys players from New York and Pennsylvania was decided by a single goal.
And despite an uptick in scoring this year, the result was the same. New York topped Pennsylvania, 2-1, for the second year in a row at the NY/PA Corporate Cup Soccer Showcase held at Saturday afternoon the Kessel Athletic Complex at Pitt-Bradford.
Later, in the inaugural girls game, New York downed Pennsylvania, 4-1.
The boys game featured everything from a yellow card to a live-stream broadcast to a drone dropping the game ball in the middle of the pitch before the start.
PA struck first on a free kick goal off the foot of Seth Harrington (Warren) less than 10 minutes into the game. After getting shut out 1-0 last year, his goal was the first in game history for Pennsylvania.
“That was completely the guys on the field,” Bradford High’s Wes Lohrman, the Pennsylvania coach said. “I told them in the locker room before we came out that if we have set pieces … get together on the field and talk about it. I know Seth and Jack (Mohney) talked about what they wanted to do. Seth just hit a beautiful ball that ducked down into the back of the net.”
However, New York dominated the remainder of the first half, finishing with eight shots on target and two goals.
It was the combination of Bryant Talbot (Allegany-Limestone) and Zack Linderman (Olean) that gave PA’s backline all sorts of trouble. Talbot scored NY’s first goal on a batted ball in the box with an assistant from Linderman, who then got hit own tally with less than five minutes left in the half to put New York up 2-1.
Talbot’s high school coach, and NY head coach, Jon Luce, wasn’t surprised to see the two players have such a chemistry on the field.
“They play together all the time, and though they’re at different schools, we’re right next door,” Luce said. “We play against each other, but during the offseason, they’re playing together so they know what each other is doing. They’re really good friends, the families are good friends, so it just helps with that chemistry on the field.”
Both player’s fathers are the co-founders of the Corporate Cup.
Those three goals in the first 45 minutes completed the scoring.
“Defense was better in the second half (and) we weren’t able to generate the opportunities on net that we would’ve liked to,” Lohrman said.
But neither coach saw the game as a mere exhibition.
“It doesn’t matter what you call it, when you get the kids on the field to play in a game like this, it’s going to be competitive whether you do pickup soccer or have a game of this magnitude,” Luce said. “The kids wanted to win.
“I was surprised with the amount of chemistry our guys had from the front to the back especially at the beginning of the game. I didn’t expect that because we only practiced a handful of times and they don’t play with each other except for this. The way they moved the ball together and supported each other, I thought it was great.”
Portville’s Brandon Morrow was the New York MVP while Olean’s Eli Hendrix claimed the Sportsmanship Award. Pennsylvania’s MVP was Harrington and Port Allegany’s Bryce Baker the Sportsmanship awardee.
GIRLS GAME
New York 4, Pennsylvania 1
Genesee Valley senior forward, Karah Landries, bound for Alfred University, scored two goals for New York, which never trailed.
Her first goal, with 8:10 to play in the first half, was the game-winner, putting N.Y. up, 2-0.
Landries’ second tally came 36 seconds after intermission and those two goals in under nine minutes earned her the MVP.
Bolivar-Richburg sophomore Victoria Stuck opened the scoring with 23:08 to play in the first half and Allegany-Limestone’s sophomore star, Alyssa Spring, concluded it with 35:38 remaining in the game.
“We didn’t know how they would play together because they haven’t played together as a group,” New York coach Dale MacArthur of A-L pointed out. “The first half we put people in a little bit at a time with the thought ‘If it’s tight at the end, we’ll see who’s having a good game and get all of them in.’ But the more it went on, we said, ‘We don’t see a whole lot of a difference.’
“The second half we decided to do like a hockey line change and put them all in and we didn’t drop off … it stayed pretty even. We had a little more scoring power with Landries, Spring, Molly McClelland and Katie Higby (both A-L sophomores) but not significantly more.”
Allegany-Limestone senior Anna Seamon won New York’s Sportsmanship Award.
St. Marys sophomore Lauren Eckert scored for Pennsylvania, making it 2-1 with 5:17 to play in the first half.
St. Marys’ Eric Bridges, the Pennsylvania coach, noted, “The teams were evenly-matched except for a couple of execution errors on our back line. We were ready, we came out hard but they deserve all the credit because they were better on the ball, possessed the ball more than us and did a better job of dictating and controlling play.”
But he added, “I’m happy with how our girls played. One of the things I stress is ‘play hard from beginning to end’ and they did. The girls don’t have any reason to hang their head. They played against a good team and at the end of the day somebody has to go home with an ‘L.’ Unfortunately this year it was us. But that’s not indicative of how we played or the caliber of the girls (talent).”
Elk County Catholic sophomore Olivia Sorg was Pennsylvania’s MVP while another sophomore, Kane’s Rachael Buhl, was the Sportsmanship recipient.
