By PAUL GOTHAM
ROCHESTER, N.Y. — A year ago, the Holley and Wheatland-Chili girls’ soccer teams played a pair of contests decided by a combined total of three goals.
On Thursday night, the theme of narrow margins continued. This time, though, Gary Ward’s Wheatland-Chili Wildcats needed a rally to come away with a victory.
A familiar name led the way.
Senior Niyah Rosado collected a pair of goals in a 2-nil Wheatland-Chili (2-0) win in Genesee Region action.
After struggling to muster little to no offense for the first 19 minutes of the match, Rosado put the Wildcats on the board with a counter-attack goal.
Trailing 1-o in the 27th minute of the match, freshman Emily Parker led the program’s all-time leading scorer into the open field where Rosado won a foot race with a Holley defender and finished at the near post.
27’ On the counterattack, freshman Emily Parker with the long lead to Niyah Rosado who levels the score at one. @WCWgvs pic.twitter.com/eznPEXMaho
— Paul Gotham (@PickinSplinters) October 8, 2020
“She’s always going to get a couple of opportunities,” Ward said. “She’s always going to get some chances no matter what they do to her.”
Rosado’s shot on goal was just Wheatland-Chili’s second of the match up to that point as the Holley backline managed to contain the Wildcats.
“They play a little stopper-sweeper game,” Ward explained. “We didn’t change the point of attack enough which you need to do when a team is playing a sweeper.
“This is something that always plagues my teams. It’s probably bad coaching, but early in the season we can’t seem to understand that we can’t play down the middle. We try to push it down the middle, push it down the middle, push it down the middle. The times that we took it outside are when we had some success. We could then bypass the sweeper.”
Rosado connected on an unassisted goal with 17:27 left in the match to lift W-C. The marker was her 118th of her career.
“She’s not a hundred percent,” Ward said of the 5-foot-3 forward. “We took her off at the end. She got really banged up on Tuesday against Byron-Bergen (a 1-0 Wildcats’ win) and didn’t practice yesterday. Managed to get out there today. She’s just a great kid, humble.”
Like her first goal, Rosado’s game winner came when she found open space in a counter situation.
“They manned up on Niyah,” Ward said of Holley’s defensive effort. “What she has had to learn over the past year or so is that when teams concentrate so much on her that she needs to find ways to give the ball up to other people.
“As the game went on, she got better and better at that. We had some chances and didn’t finish. Many of the passes were from her. She’s good with the ball, but she’s learning now that when things are really clogged she needs to find somebody else. Somebody’s got to be open if they have all these people around her.”
Freshman Samantha Bates gave Holley the early lead with an assist from Kayleigh Neale. Holley had a chance to double their lead moments later but a shot caromed off the post.
The Hawks made a late push to tie the game. A pair of corner kicks, though, did not produce a tying goal.
“They weren’t intimidated by us; that’s for sure,” Ward said. “They play hard. They don’t lay down. Their program is a really solid program. They’ve got some really good players. They play a nice short game.”
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