By stepping on the field Saturday, Meredith Donahue provided the emotional high point of Virginia Independent School’s Division I girls soccer championship game.

  The senior, a Collegiate team captain who had been unable to play this season because of an injury, took the kickoff and sent the ball out of bounds. Donahue stepped off the field, and without her the second-seeded Cougars settled into a hard-fought slog against long-time rival Norfolk Academy.

  And a slog it was. The top-seeded Bulldogs relentlessly attacked Collegiate’s defense and eventually cracked it, scoring two goals in a three-minute span in the second half to claim a 2-0 victory.

  Collegiate planned on playing a defensive game. They needed to. The Bulldogs fired 24 shots on goal, compared to just three for the Cougars.

  “I think you could tell from the shot total that what we were doing was working. We just weren’t finding the back of the net,” said Norfolk Academy head coach Rich Peccie. “I think in the first half that if a couple of those shots had gone in, then maybe we would have taken some of the fire out of them.”

  Collegiate keeper Gianna Tondini anchored the Cougars’ defense with 16 saves, but with so many shots coming her way, one or two were bound to get past her.

  The first came in the 48th minute when Riley Tata fed the ball to Holley Beasley, who crashed through the Cougar defense to score. Rachel Shapiro, assisted by Mary Rives Dougherty, scored the Bulldogs’ next goal in the 51st minute.

  “It’s a common thing in soccer. Once a goal is scored, you often see one of the teams, if not both of the teams, let down,” Peccie said. “We talked about getting that first goal and pressuring them to try to get that second one. That’s what we were able to do. They had been working so hard defensively, that once we got that goal, there was a collective let-down.”

  The let-down did not last for long, though, the game settled back into the defensive battle it had been before. Collegiate hung tough. The Bulldogs took the bulk of the shots, but the Cougars kept the ball out of the net.

  “We knew they weren’t going to give up, they weren’t going to let up,” Peccie said. “They played a more defensive game, and then they tried to beat us in transition. They were hoping they would break through for one.”

  The Cougars nearly succeeded in breaking through in the sixth minute, but Bulldog keeper Aekta Javia’s diving save kept the game scoreless.

  “We took a lot of lumps this season, but we didn’t back down,” said Collegiate coach Bill Rider. “We learned something from every game.”

  Peccie complimented Collegiate for its ability to play his Bulldogs so tough.

  “We tried to play the kind of soccer that we’ve been playing all season long,” Peccie said. “They really disrupt us – something about the Norfolk Academy-Collegiate rivalry.”

  Rider said the Cougars knew from the start they needed to play tough on defense.

  “We knew that we had to be committed with defense first and then try to counter-punch,” Rider said. “We knew we’d have to be selective, take some punches and wait for opportunities. We weren’t going to beat them in an up-and-down the field track meet.”

  Rider said his Cougars would have preferred to win, but it was a good night nonetheless.

  “All you can do at the end of a game is determine if you really gave it everything you had,” Rider said. “There were smiles coming off that field because I think every one of them knew they didn’t leave anything behind. … I’m so proud of those girls.”

Collegiate…............................. 0 0 – 0
Norfolk Academy…................. 0 2 – 2
NA – Beasley (Tata), 48th minute
NA – Shapiro (Dougherty), 51st minute Shots: Collegiate 3, Collegiate 24.
Saves: Tondini (C) 16, Javia (NA) 2.
Records: Collegiate 12-9-3, Norfolk Academy 21-1