In a Friday night battle between two of the state’s top prep girls soccer teams, the No. 2 ranked Cougars of Collegiate rallied from a 2-1 halftime deficit, coming back to beat the No. 4 ranked Saints of St. Catherine’s 3-2.

  The game marked the second time the Saints have lost to Collegiate this season but also the only losses for St. Catherine’s this year.

  From the beginning both teams demonstrated they were there to compete, and with the athleticism and physicality of the game one may have thought they were attending a rugby match in the no holds were barred contest.

  “Collegiate’s a very athletic team and we rose to the occasion,” said Saints’ head coach, Laurie Marshalek. “To be able to hang with them and stay with them is a great feat for St. Catherine’s.  The girls played their hearts out, and I can’t complain.” 

  St. Catherine’s was first on the board and led at the end of the first period; but the tide changed in the middle of the second when the Cougars struck with two goals in quick succession. 

  Although the Saints managed to get six more shots on goal, perhaps the most threatening came in the final moments of the game when Collegiate’s senior goalkeeper, Mimi Darden, came up with the game winning save with seconds left on the clock.  Be that as it may, the Saints left no doubt in anyone’s mind they were a force to be reckoned with.

  Less than ten minutes into play, St. Catherine’s took the lead when freshman Morgan Powell shot in a partially deflected liner from 16 meters out midfield.
 
  Twenty minutes later, the Cougars knotted the game at one when senior mid Mollie Bisger headed one in from senior Becky Patton’s corner kick. 

  “We don’t spend a whole lot of time on corners,” Patton said, “but I realized that the ones that were going out, they were clearing away pretty well, so I just tried to get it in closer to the goal and thankfully it worked.” 

  But the stalwart Saints answered minutes later when junior Emma Ruffin took a quick pass off the corner and spanked one into the opposite corner net past a frustrated Darden. 

  “We had been working on the two man corner with Amanda Kim and Emma Ruffin,” Marshalek said, “and this one was just textbook.  She looked up and got it right in the back of the net.”

  The Cougars would not breathe more easily until the middle of the second period when Patton lobbed one in from the middle about 15 meters out to tie it up. 

  “We’re a kind of team that can dig in and pull out the win,” Patton said, “so when we were down at half time, I wasn’t really that worried, although we had some things to improve on.  We usually do pretty well snapping together and pulling together as a team.

  The game changer came a minute later when Bisger lobbed in another over the Saints’ GK’s head from the right side. 
  “They did really well,” Bisger said.  “The first half was a little rough, but once we got it together and started connecting with our passes, getting good balls down into the corners, it was really easy for us to get them into the goal.  Blair Munford passed it back to me and they were all attacking her, so I took a stab and shot it, and it went in.”

  “It looked like our strategy was to keep trying to tie them up before we could get the game winner” said Collegiate head coach Bill Rider. “That’s a real solid team.  They were opportunistic; and they’ve done a tremendous job of building that program over there.  Every time we play them it’s a closer and closer game.  It’s real exciting to see parity in the LIS.”

St. Catherine’s…................... 2 0 — 2
Collegiate…........................... 1 2 — 3
StC: Ruffin, Powell C: Bisger 2, Patton. Saves: Hillner (StC) 5, Wolenberg (StC) 5; Darden (C) 4
Records: St. Catherine’s 5-2 LIS, 12-2; Collegiate 7-0, 11-2