By Dylan Butler
The piercing telephone ringing woke Kaitlin Purcell out of a deep sleep Sunday morning. On the other end of the line was her coach, John Jenkins, with some bizarre news.
The St. Francis Prep girls’ soccer coach was at North Shore University Hospital after slicing the middle and index fingers on his right hand while cutting the grass at Fort Totten several hours before the Terriers CHSAA semifinal game against Sacred Heart.
St. Francis Prep dedicated the game to their coach, but couldn’t rally from a 2-0 deficit as the Terriers fell to Sacred Heart, 2-1.
The rest of the team had been informed of the accident by assistant Sister Phylis Murphy when they arrived at the field at around 1 p.m. In Jenkins’ absence, junior varsity coach Nick Stork coached the team.
“We all thought it was a joke, but she wasn’t joking,” said Purcell, the senior co-captain. “Everyone was shocked.”
“We wanted to make sure he was OK, but his son [John Jenkins, Jr.] said he was all right and it wasn’t as serious as he thought,” added co-captain Christine Lettieri. “We knew we should have won and could have won. We dominated the whole game but they got a couple of breaks and we didn’t.”
The game was a rematch of last year’s semifinal, won by St. Francis Prep in penalty kicks on Sacred Heart’s home field.
Like the game last year, Sacred Heart (11-4-1) jumped ahead 1-0 in the first half as Terriers keeper Christina Aquilon couldn’t handle Alyse Messina’s cross from the corner and Alexandra Lauterborn slotted home the rebound with 10 minutes left in the first half.
“The key was getting that first goal,” said Sacred Heart coach Chris Chruma. “It was nice to go into halftime with a lead, but there was still 40 minutes to play.”
St. Francis Prep (10-4-2) pushed its numbers forward in an attempt to net the equalizer and dominated possession in the second half, but Sacred Heart countered with the back breaker with 20 minutes left in the second half.
Alana O’Connor ran onto a long ball from Messina and split Purcell and Lettieri, each thinking the other was going to tackle the junior forward. O’Connor raced to the ball at the top of the box and slotted it past Aquilon, who came off her line to challenge.
“We haven’t beaten them this season and we knew we had to capitalize on every opportunity we had,” O’Connor said. “We wanted to beat them strong and we definitely wanted to beat them in regulation.”
The Terriers quickly answered when Cristina DaSilva tapped in Purcell’s corner kick to cut their deficit to 2-1, but couldn’t tie the game as Sacred Heart advances to the CHSAA title game to face St. Anthony’s Saturday at the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy in Kings Point.
“We really wanted to play St. Anthony’s again,” Purcell said. “We had our ups and downs this year, but we always came back.”
Reach Associate Sports Editor Dylan Butler by email at TimesLedger@aol.com or call 229-0300, Ext. 143.
