HILLBURN – With four seconds left and the game on her stick, Gabby Rosenzweig was ready for a chance to break a 9-9 tie with a free position chance from the right side.
Rosenzweig, with encouragement from her younger sister Livy, broke in and blasted a shot past Yorktown goalie Nikki Prestiano as time expired to give second-seeded Somers a 10-9 come-from-behind win over the top-seeded Huskers in the Class B Section 1 final at Torne Valley Stadium on Thursday.
“The adrenaline really kicked in, and my sister looked at me and said ‘Gabby, you are burying this shot,” Rosenzweig said. “It motivated me; I looked around at my teammates, I just wanted to do it for them.”
While Somers did come into the game as the title holders, they had lost to Yorktown twice in the regular season, with the first meeting going to Yorktown in a 13-3 blowout.
Somers learned a lot from that game.
“The first game, we came out scared and I didn’t understand why,” Somers coach Jamie Irving said. “After the second game, I said to them ‘this is just a battle, we want to win the war.”
Yorktown got a goal from Casey Duff with 8:42 left to give the Huskers an 8-6 lead, but Somers got goals from Livy Rosenzweig and Sydney Ericson to tie the game with 4:36 left.
With 2:42 left, Yorktown’s Rilea Fusco passed out of a double-team to Duff, who finished on a tough angle to give the Huskers back the lead. Thirty-three seconds later, Somers’ Izzy LaRocca tied the game. Somers won the ensuing draw control, setting the stage for Gabby Rosenzweig’s winner.
“I love every girl on this team; I barely knew half of them at the beginning of the season, but it was a huge team effort,” she said. “We knew we didn’t have anything to lose, we knew we could fight back, all it was at the end of the game was heart.”
For Yorktown, the loss was only the second time this season that the team suffered defeat, and the third-straight season that the Huskers were stopped at the sectional final. Michelle Seger had three goals and an assist, Duff had three goals and Fusco had a goal and two assists.
For Somers, Gabby Rosenzweig had three goals and an assist, while Livy Rosenzweig, Nicole DeMase and Ericson all had two-goal games.
“Last year was the first time, but to be able even compete today, it was an amazing feat,” coach Irving said. “We knew in the beginning, it was going to be a drag-down fight, and my girls showed a lot.”
Click here to see my photo gallery of the game.
Video of Gabby Rosenzweig’s game-winner
(Photos and video by Adrian Szkolar/The Journal News)
The post Somers defends Class B title with Rosenzweig’s buzzer-beater appeared first on The Lohud Girls Lacrosse Blog.
