OCEAN CITY – The Mustang girls soccer team ended rival Ocean City’s unbeaten streak with a goal 99 minutes and 59 seconds into the game.
That’s two full 40-minute halves and one second shy of two 10-minute overtimes.
With under 10 seconds left in the second overtime period and the game scoreless, the referee awarded a penalty kick on the far left side of the field more than 30 yards from the goal.
Mainland Regional High School senior Camryn Dirkes, seeing the clock tick down to four seconds, quickly put the ball down at the mark and gave it everything she had.
She sent the ball in a high arc toward the goal. The ball sailed over the head and out of reach of leaping Ocean City goalie Tori Vliet and into the net a split second before the clock hit zero and the buzzer sounded.
The Mustang girls erupted in celebration and all the Red Raiders could do was look on in stunned silence.
“I looked up at the clock and thought, ‘It’s now or never.’ I put the ball on the ground and kicked it as hard as I could, to be honest,” Dirkes said, laughing about the rushed yet perfectly placed ball. “It was insane.”
“I just really wanted to get one more shot off,” Dirkes added. “I couldn’t leave it on a foul and let the time run out. I just had to keep going just as our team did the entire time. It was a matter of time. I really think we had the better play the entire game.”
“I feel great for the girls,” Mainland head coach Chris Meade said. “They’ve worked really hard. We came in knowing we didn’t have pressure on us. We’ve had our ups and downs this season with injuries and games we haven’t put 100 percent mentally into and we talked about that a lot. We felt we had a decent game plan to attack a very dangerous Ocean City team.”
“They had more chances than us, but it only takes one breakdown, or one play, and that’s what we talked about, that hopefully that breakdown will be them, not us,” Meade said. “If we stay consistent with our game plan we can find the back of the net at one point because we have so many dangerous players too.”
In the first half, Ocean City’s defense consistently kept Mainland from crossing midfield. Meade said the Red Raiders stole the ball form his players regularly in that half allowing them to set up attacks. His girls weren’t passing well either and couldn’t set up many runs deep into Ocean City territory.
That changed in the second half as Mainland began to penetrate the Ocean City defense, even if they couldn’t get many clean shots and on the ones that they did, Vliet kept coming up with big saves. Mainland defenders were sticking like glue to Ocean City’s attackers – including Summer Reimet – the entire game, trying to limit any breakaways or one-on-ones with the goalie.
The biggest save for Mainland came at the very end of regulation, again with the time running out. Ocean City was awarded a corner kick. It was low and the Mustangs were able to clear it, but the ball went over the end line, setting up another rushed corner kick. With under 10 seconds left, Hope Slimmer put a beautiful ball right into the mix of players in front of the goal, but Mustang goalie Genevieve Morrison charged into the fray and wrapped up the ball just as the buzzer sounded.
Ocean City’s best chance at a goal came in the second half as McKenna Chisholm got herself clear of defenders at the top of the box. Morrison charged out and slid toward Chisholm’s feet to try to block it. Chisholm got the shot off, but the ball banged off the post.
There were few chances like that throughout the game and whenever they came, Morrison and Vliet made critical saves to keep the game scoreless all the way through the second overtime.
“Coming out of the first half it was 0-0 and we felt like that gave us a lot of confidence,” Dirkes said. “We thought ‘we got this.’ We can really push now. I think we were more defensive the first half so going into the second half we had trust in each other, like we did last time, but this time it worked out for us.” The last time, on their home field, the Mustangs lost to Ocean City, 3-1.
These teams know and respect each other, but whenever Ocean City and Mainland meet, the rivalry takes precedence.
“It’s a great feeling” to beat Ocean City, Dirkes said. “It makes it 10 times better that it’s our rival, of course. But we have good relationships with a lot of the girls. A lot of our girls played with them all throughout middle school. It’s a friendly rivalry, but when we get down to business, we get down to business.”
In the second half, Meade said, they worked to limit the turnovers and used a lot of substitutions to keep the outside midfielders fresh. “We only really had one up. We ask a lot of our outside mids to really play like forwards but also to play like outside mids. That’s why we were subbing so much on the outside, trying to keep everyone fresh in that spot – give us 10 or 15 minutes of everything you’ve got.
“I can’t say enough about our girls and the way they played,” Meade said. Talking about the play of his goalie, he said, “G (Morrison) is very consistent. She is a really good goalie. She can play with her feet, she’s a heck of an athlete in goal. I don’t want to take away from their goalie; she (Vliet) is a phenomenal player as well. Kudos to her as well.
“We have a tough (defense). It’s phenomenal to have a goalie back there to support that as well,” Meade said.
“There is a rivalry, but I believe there is a mutual respect,” Meade said of playing Ocean City. “We talked about it before the game and I’m sure this won’t be the last time we see them this year. Hopefully we can continue to roll a little bit.”
Ocean City coach Lisa Cuneo was not happy with the way her team played.
“I see missed opportunities and close calls,” she said. “I hate to nitpick with them, but I have to because it is my job to keep the bar high. I didn’t see a good effort. I saw a flat team today. They were trying to force things that weren’t there and they have to learn from that.
“And then I see a Mainland team that played really good defense on us,” she said. “I give them props. They executed appropriately. They did what they needed to do.”
Cuneo said Dirkes made “a great shot” and “it’s on us. We didn’t front the ball. We were kind of lackluster on that even with four seconds left in the game.”
The one good thing, Cuneo said, is that the first loss of the season after 11 wins came now.
“We need to learn from it and regroup,” she said. “We need to come out with energy. If you can’t get fired up for an O.C.-Mainland game, I don’t know what’s going to get them fired up. There is absolutely a silver lining it. As I was discussing with my husband the other day – he’s a former coach – the loss would have to come sooner or later. Do I hate to have a loss against Mainland? Yeah. They’re our rivals, but it’s better now than in November. We just want to win the last game. That’s still doable and that’s what we’re looking forward to.”
These two teams could face each other agains in the South Jersey Group III sectionals.
Ocean City was 11-1 on the season after the loss. Mainland was 9-2-1.
Ocean City was atop the National Conference with a 10-1 record; Mainland was second at 9-2.
Ocean City won the state championship in 2019 – the last game of the season.
– BY DAVID NAHAN/OCEAN CITY SENTINEL
