Montgomery pulls away

<p>The Montgomery girls’ soccer team lost 12 seniors from the group that won the North Bay League last year. Maybe that’s why it took the Vikings a full half to get warmed up Wednesday.</p><p>Montgomery, the top-ranked girls’ team in the Empire, scored goals in the 26th and 28th minutes of the second half to pull away from No. 2 Ursuline and leave the field at Cardinal Newman with a 3-1 win.</p><p>The Lady Vikings improved to 4-0 in the NBL, 7-1 overall. It was the first loss on the field for the Bears, who forfeited two games because of tardy paperwork and officially fell to 1-3 overall, 1-2 in league.</p><p>Ursuline coach John Gilson felt his team played out of character after going up 1-0 on Jordan Henry’s header off a sharply angled pass from A.D. Bertoli in the 10th minute of the first half.</p><p>“It’s the normal thing, where you get that goal early because of your speed up top,” Gilson said. “Then you fall into a trap where you think, ‘We’re gonna win this on speed and move the ball forward.’ You get out of what you really do, which is move the ball.”</p><p>Montgomery’s Ashley Cella had a simpler explanation.</p><p>“We just came out with more heart in the second half,” she said. “We wanted it more.”</p><p>The Vikings are inexperienced and still finding their rhythm, but they’re getting valuable contributions from young players — like Cella, a freshman who scored two goals against Ursuline.</p><p>The Bears held their lead for about 14 minutes, until Montgomery tied the score on a set play. Amy Mitchell sent a pass through Jazmine Whitlock’s legs and ahead to Cella, who netted it from 10 yards out.</p><p>“I got a poke at it,” Cella said.</p><p>Once the teams took the field after halftime, the game was largely played within striking distance of Ursuline’s goal, but for a while the Vikings couldn’t produce.</p><p>In the 9th minute, star forward Selam Solomon broke away and smacked a shot that deflected out to Breanna Taylor. Her shot was knocked out of bounds, and on the corner kick, Casey Parisi sent a header into the arms of Ursuline goalie Rachel Rubattino. In the 22nd minute, Solomon dribbled down the left wing, lost a defender, and drilled a low shot that Rubattino snared with a dive to her right.</p><p>Whitlock finally broke the tie when she looped a ball from the right side, and it bounced off a Bears defender’s head and into the goal. Two minutes later, Cella placed a beautiful high ball over the goalie’s reach from the right side.</p><p>The athletic Solomon tested the Bears all night.</p><p>“She didn’t get one tonight, but everyone fed off her efforts,” Montgomery coach Pat McDonald said. “She was working the defense so hard.”</p><p>I’m just as proud when I’m getting the ball and letting other people score,” Solomon said.</p><p>The senior paused before adding: “But I do like to score goals. I feel unaccomplished when I don’t.”</p><p>The Vikings now head to Utah for a potentially brutal road trip. They play Alta (the No. 1 5A team in Utah) Friday and Lone Peak (the No. 2 team) Saturday. Alta has lost one game in two years — to Montgomery in 2006.</p><p>McDonald believes his team will have to bump up its game to compete with those powerhouses.</p><p>“We’re not that good yet,” he said. “We just play hard. We were lucky tonight.”</p><p>As for Ursuline, Gilson doesn’t consider Wednesday’s loss a major setback.</p><p>“I think we’re trying to figure out ourselves,” he said. “We’ve only played five games. I think it’s a thing where we get into the season and we’re starting to feel what we can do.</p><p>“Can we play with them? Absolutely.”</p><p>You can reach Phil Barber at 521-5263 or phil.barber@pressdemocrat.com.</p>