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BY VAL TSOUTSOURIS
Sports Editor, RTC
Brooklyn Buzzard scored in the first half and added a pair of assists, and Campbell Bolinger scored twice on a pair of long strikes in the second half as the Manchester girls soccer team defeated host Rochester 3-0 at the Brent Blacketor Memorial Sports Complex on Sept. 19.
Manchester improved to 5-5-2 overall and 3-0 in the Three Rivers Conference.
Rochester, which had scored 14 goals in winning its previous two games, fell to 3-5-1, 1-2.
“I don’t think they do anything defensively that makes them hard to score on; I just don’t think we can score,” Rochester coach Chantal Rensberger said. “I don’t know what it is about that team, but every conference game, we slaughter other teams in our conference, and they either lose or barely squeak by. And then they come play us, and it’s like every other year, we either kick their butts, or they kick ours, and it’s like something with that team.”
Rochester was coming off a 4-0 win over Bremen two days earlier that Rensberger called “the best game of the season.”
Freshman Mylee Heinzmann had a shutout in goal against Bremen, and Rensberger said none of the goals she allowed in this game were a result of any error of hers.
Otherwise, this effort was not like the Bremen game, according to Rensberger. She wants her players more aggressively hunting shots the way Bolinger did in the second half for Manchester.
“We came out today, and I don’t feel like we did with the Bremen game,” Rensberger said. “They were aggressive. She (Manchester coach Jen Birch) plays a four back, and I don’t, and I don’t plan on doing that. But everyone moved. It was like they were an oiled engine back there together. Their goalie had some really nice saves. But we’ve got to get our foot off the ball. We’ve got to score. We can’t win games when you don’t score. We had a lot of opportunities, and it didn’t happen, and I think a lot of our girls just gave up at the end.”
Rochester is the two-time defending TRC champs, but Rensberger said that she would be “floored” if Manchester did not take the title after this result.
“We have to be better to win, and we weren’t tonight,” Rensberger said. “It’s disappointing for my seniors. They really wanted that three-peat … but you’ve got to have all 11 playing. You can’t have five. And tonight we maybe had five.”
