Aquinas rallies past McQuaid

By MIKE ROSE

Rochester, NY — The reigning Class A state champions have already been pushed to the limit more often than last season. However, with their backs against the wall on Wednesday night the Aquinas Li’L Irish showed its championship mettle as they rallied past the McQuaid Jesuit Knights, 2-1.

Aquinas blitzed past the competition en route to the title last season finishing 20-0-2, but after dropping the opener this season to Brighton, McQuaid seemed poised to hand them a second loss just three games into the campaign.

“To be honest with you, going undefeated is very hard to do,” Aquinas head coach Josh Gleason said. “The stress that all of us had last year was through the roof. Of course, we’d want to be undefeated and keep doing that but the idea is to be playing well at the right time. We knew we were going to take some lumps early. We have guys that played no minutes last year and are expected to be 80-minute players.”

The Li’L Irish did take lumps early in the first half. McQuaid succeeded in applying pressure and controlled the action before finally breaking through late. Kevin Miller settled a pass from Sammy Maaraba and after a perfect shot fake created space, he buried it to make it 1-0 Jesuit Knights. That tally with 3:14 to play in the first half held up into the intermission.

“I was not too worried about it,” Aquinas goalie LJ Gleason said of his team’s mindset after the late McQuaid goal. “It’s like a chess match, just because you lose your queen doesn’t mean you lose the game.”

“It was less about us and more about McQuaid doing a good job in the first half,” Gleason said of the opening 40 minutes. “They were really organized, they had some really good pattern play with what they wanted to do and we had to adjust to it. I think we went at halftime and really got on the boys about work rate because we were really getting outworked by McQuaid in the first half. I think the guys responded well and decided to dig in and do it the AQ way.”

That second-half mindset change was evident quickly as Aquinas controlled almost all of the action early in the second half. One of the most noticeable changes was Tin-Tin Pasia beginning to make a greater mark on the game. The AGR honorable mention from last season finally struck to tie the game just over seven minutes into the half. He found himself on the receiving end of a pass from Micaiah Benjamin-Castle right on goal and buried the equalizer for his second goal in as many games.

“He just played it to me and I was nervous at first when I touched the ball but I just turned my body and just shot and it was a goal,” Pasia said.

From there Aquinas firmly controlled the game. They continued to push numbers forward with the front line of Pasia, Franklin Safari and Ryan Lewin causing issues for McQuaid on the back end. From that point on it felt like it was only a matter of time before the Li’L Irish would pull ahead. They would do just that when Pasia got loose again behind the defense off a feed from Jiwon Kang and put Aquinas in front for good.

“I knew I was gonna score the goal, no one was going to stop me,” Pasia said when he saw he had broken free. “We just kept pushing ourselves to score that second goal.”

Pasia’s pair of goals came six minutes of game action apart and the damage had been done. He would nearly finish off the hat trick later on but pushed a chip shot effort wide of the goal. The Li’L Irish had already received all the offense they would need, however. LJ Gleason slammed the door on any opportunities late to help push Aquinas across the finish line.

“I feel like we needed this win to turn the season around,” the Aquinas goalie said. “I feel like it was a little bumpy with the loss to Brighton and we needed this and I’m so grateful to God we got this win.”

“I really said to myself today, if the kids played well I’d be happy regardless of what the result is but I’m a firm believer for my group, if you play well, we’ll get results,” Josh Gleason said.

The win pushed the reigning state champions to 2-1 while the Jesuit Knights suffered their first loss of the season and fell to 1-1-1. The two teams are slated to meet again in the regular season finale on October 18.