Cape Elizabethan Presley Piscopo hashed a pair of goals late in the second half against visiting Gray-New Gloucester on Thursday evening, Sept. 29, each one inching her girls closer to their eventual 3-2 victory.

“That’s a big win for us,” said Capers head coach Craig Fannan. “[G-NG] played us really tough last year in playoffs; I think we won 1-0. And we graduated a lot, so we were expecting a tough game…Kiaran (McCormack, G-NG head coach) is a great coach, he’s always going to get the girls organized. They’re a town that’s very proud of their sports teams, so you know they’re going to work hard and give everything, and that’s what we got.”

Piscopo echoed her coach’s sentiments. “I expected a hard game,” she said. “They’ve been good over the years…They fought just as hard as us.”

Kiaran McCormack was pleased with his girls’ effort. “This year, more than ever, was the year we were going to try to come here and play,” he said. “The girls have been doing really well; we know that Cape is a good team. I was happy with the effort and the quality of play throughout the game.”

Play through the first half was balanced – exactly as both teams expected it would be. Each side did a solid job, penetrating through the midfield to generate decent chances versus the opposition goaltender.

“My girls, we had a plan,” McCormack said, “and we really executed on that. It was to…get the ball forward to our wide forwards as early as we could to really get at their defense.”

The Patriots struck first, Brianna Jordan threading a direct kick from outside-left just beyond the reach of Cape keeper Grace Roberts. But in such an even matchup, the Capers were bound to respond, and soon enough they did. They led into the moment with a couple near-misses, one just high from 25 yards out by Mariah Deschino and another barely wide right by Piscopo on the distant left. They finally converted on a charge: Karli Chapin won a clash with G-NG defender Abigail Ross, pushing past as Ross hit the turf to wring a 15-yards-out point from Patriots netminder Chelsea Davis.

“In the first half, when [G-NG] first scored,” said Piscopo, “I thought we could come out even stronger, and score a couple more goals. And we did.”

The scoring stalled out at 1-1, lingering there through the break. Early in the downhill half, Deschino earned a solid shot on Davis around 10 minutes in, juking past Jordan on the left side – but Davis proved equal to the challenge. She couldn’t, however, repel Piscopo’s pinpoint attempt at 12:08 from low in the right G-NG corner. Piscopo’s ball sailed to the top-left of Davis’s cage, somehow finding its way inside. 2-1. 

“I saw Mariah dribbling down,” Piscopo said of her first strike, “and I saw an open space. I didn’t want to be off-sides, so I curved my run around. Mariah passed it through and I chipped it over the goalie to the top-left.”

“She’s a sophomore,” Fannan said of Piscopo, “so she’s young; but she’s got so much ability, so much talent. It’s really just getting her in the right mindset to do it…trying to give her the confidence to go and do it. We’ve been working hard with her attitude and her energy and what she should do with the ball. To see her produce is an absolute dream. She should be scoring 10 or 15 goals a season – she’s that good; she just needs to believe it sometimes.”

Throughout the latter half, Cape seemed to have tilted the field in their favor. McCormack attributed the momentum shift to a strategic experiment on his part.

“We changed tactically,” he said, “to see if we could have more success. But that initial tactical change really wasn’t the thing to do at that time…On a big field, against a good team, you’re always going to give up space. It’s a determination of where you want to give up that space. In the first half, we thought we’d be more comfortable letting them have the ball in deeper areas, and in the second half, we came out deciding, ‘Let’s press them a little higher.’ Often, that helps; against Cape, with the quality of some of their players, they were able to pass through that pressure a little bit.”

G-NG backtracked on the tactical change, reverting to their first-half formation. The decision paid dividends, and McCormack’s ladies answered Piscopo’s goal with one of their own. 15 yards out from Cape hallowed ground, Jaley Martin wheeled and lofted up a shot that arced in over a leaping Roberts. 2-2. 

But Piscopo struck again with under four to play, cutting inward from high on the left side of the Patriots’ zone and peeling off a shot over the airborne Davis for 3-2. With so little time remaining, and matched up as they were with a tough opponent, G-NG simply couldn’t come back. 

Piscopo described her second strike: “Grace Gillian gave me a pass out to the wide area on the left,” she said, “and I dribbled to the middle – kind of by the 30. I just hit it.”

Asked if she realized her shot was fated to find the back of the net, Piscopo said: “I was thinking, at first, that I would hit it too hard and it would go over – but then, when it was going right at the goal, I knew it was going in.”

“There were a couple defensive lapses for [Cape’s] second and third goals, that we’ll address,” McCormack said. “My girls are going to feel, a little bit, like we didn’t get out of the game what we deserved, but I really can’t fault their effort. In that sense, if it’s a moral victory, it’s a moral victory. That doesn’t reflect in the Heal Points, but it’s something to build on.”

Fifth-ranked Cape improved to 5-4 with the win. The team travels to York (No. 3 at 5-2-2) on Tuesday, Oct. 4, then hosts Falmouth (eighth in A South at 5-4) on the 8th.

Fannan sounded off on where his girls are at recently: “Our team, although young,” Fannan said, “is just getting better every game; we’re seeing more character and more responses. When it gets back to 2-2 with so little time to play, it could swing against us, but the reaction from the girls today was fantastic. They stepped it up and kept really calm. Thankfully, Presley delivered big for us.”

“We’ve had a big week, beating Kennebunk on Tuesday and Gray today,” Fannan said. “I know a lot of them girls; I worked in Gray-New Gloucester four years ago, so I coached a few of the girls. It’s fun to see them.”

No. 7 G-NG slipped to 5-4 on the loss. The Patriots host Yarmouth (No. 1 at 8-0-1) on the 4th, then Lake Region (No. 11 at 3-6) on the 7th.

G-NG’s Emma Woods and Cape’s Sarah Knupp clash, Woods managing to hang onto control.

Cape’s Olivia Cochran pushes upfield with the ball; Darcy Cochran follows closely.

Cape Captain Bridgett Brett shuttles the ball forward in her team’s 3-2 win over visiting G-NG on Thursday.

Patriot Kelsey Randall settles a ball at Cape Elizabeth on Thursday.

G-NGer Abigail Ross boots a ball up as a Cape opponent descends on her position.

Cape Captain Mariah Deschino and G-NG opponent Eliza Hotham do battle; Deschino gets a solid foot on the ball.