Saratoga Girls Continue to Dominate Lower Half of the VYRA Division

On Saturday, May 3rd, the Saratoga Mustangs Girls hosted Colchester High School. Despite their record, the word on Colchester was that they were a high octane offensive team and had plenty of talent. Recent trends continued though, and after 70 minutes of regulation play, Saratoga extended their undefeated season with a 41-0 trouncing of Colchester, dropping the Vermont team to 0-4 on the season.

Saratoga also maintained its shutout streak with its third consecutive shut out, which, including a forfeit win over CVU, now stands at over 2.5 hours of game play without surrendering a single point on the season.

Saratoga started the day's scoring early, with a balanced attack featuring some relative new comers to the Super A side. Due to May 3rd being a national testing day for the SAT's, both Saratoga and Colchester were missing most of their juniors. The open spaces left by Saratoga's juniors led to starts by rookies Shannon Dowdle (BH-BL), Sarah Cranfield (BH-BL), Shelby Snyder (Scotia-Glenville), Melayna Weaver (BH-BL), and Leah Gerlach (BH-BL). Injuries and unavailability also led to the return of senior Jess Kniskern (Stillwater) and junior Jen Rohling (BH-BL).

Saratoga used a fast paced balanced attack to attempt to overwhelm Colchester’s defense. The strategy involved a swarming pack that rucked fast and hard, keeping the ball available so that both the pack and the line could cut through Colchester before they could setup their defense. With Rohling leading the way through her decisions of who and where to distribute the ball, about four minutes into the game the ball made it into sophomore wing Samantha Coluccio’s (BH-BL) hands and she fought her way into the try zone, dragging a defender with her, for a score. Freshman Khirstian Carbonello (BH-BL) converted the team’s first kick for the season and Saratoga jumped out to 7-0 lead.

The next fourteen minutes were marked with some hard hits and strong runs by sophomore center Carly Baker (Averil Park) and some great poaching of the ball by Colchester’s eventual Rugger of the Match winner, Megan Gregory. Saratoga eventually retained possession long enough to put together a sustained drive, as they had been threatening to do spending most of the time in Colchester's end of the field, when Kniskern sliced through Colchester's defense for the second score of the day. Carbonello's second consecutive conversion increased Saratoga's lead to 14-0.

After seeing the line dominate the scoring, the pack decided that it was time for it to wrack up some scores on its own. Melaya Weaver (BH-BL), who is becoming a serious scoring threat from the eight man position, rumbled through Colchester for a score, following it up five minutes later with her second for the last score of the half push Saratoga to a 24-0 lead.

The second half began much of the same way the first half did. After receiving the kickoff, Saratoga started working its way down through Colchester's territory. The fast pace of Saratoga's offense and lack of a full bench of subs caused evident fatigue and the pace of the second half slowed significantly. Colchester was able to string together several rucks in a row and began utilizing the maul to maintain possession and gain territory on the field. Eighteen minutes into the second half, however, it was fast running and hard hitting sophomore rookie wing Leah Gerlach (BH-BL) that notched her own score. After ten minutes of back and forth play, in which Colchester was growing is time of possession, Gerlach added her second score of the day with a hard run up the left side of the pitch.

The last seven minutes had increasingly slow play from both sides and was marked by several injuries. Marianna Carta (BH-BL) and Tiffany Neach (BH-BL) came out with injuries to hand and ankle, respectively, and were replaced by Jenny von Rosen (BH-BL) and Haley Brown (BH-BL), and a substitution for Katie Dannenberg (BH-BL) with Brianne Briggs (BH-BL), attempting to reinvigorate a slowing Saratoga pack who had been hustling all day, but was starting to run out of steam. The plan worked, with eventual Rugger of the Match winner Quennah Holt (Bethlehem) bursting through the middle of the field, breaking two tackles and outrunning several defenders to put an explanation point on the victory with the final score of the day, and with Carbonello's final conversion, Saratoga claimed a 41-0 victory. It is the second time that Holt has received the distinction.

Saratoga's Super A's improved to 4-0 in preparation for next weekend's game against the strongest team in VYRA, Adirondack, who Saratoga will travel to play on May 10th before returning home to host Essex on May 17th.