Sports
Girls Soccer Shuts Out Ludlowe En Route to Final
New Canaan beat Fairfield Ludlowe in the FCIAC Championship semi-final round.
The New Canaan Rams girls soccer team moved into the FCIAC finals with a convincing 4-0 win over Fairfield Ludlowe in the semi-final round Monday. The Rams will play in the championship game Wednesday against Ridgefield which beat Greenwich in the other semi-final. Both games were played at Wilton High School.
New Canaan controlled the action from the start with six players contributing to the scoring.
Caroline Murray, who never stops running, hit the opening goal on a nifty cross from Abby Lee near the right corner just 10 minutes in.
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The Rams next goal was textbook. Murray initiated it with a perfect ball to Clare Ashforth who found Liz Bruno on the left side with another dead-on pass. Bruno didn't waste any time in sending a high ball to the far corner of the net from about sixty feet for a 2-0 lead. Bruno got the goal with her "off" foot, the left one. "I'm a natural righty," she said after the game.
New Canaan dominated against a team they had played to a 1-1 tie less than three weeks earlier. The Ludlowe team was quick—the Rams were quicker as they took a 2-0 lead into halftime. New Canaan had nine shots to four for Ludlowe in the first half. Rams goalie Holly Burwick had one save to three for Ludlowe's Blakely Zecher.
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The second half was more of the same. On a direct kick from near the sideline, co-captain Freddie Kemp lofted a high rainbow into the box where fellow co-captain Kacey Pippitt headed it in.
"We had been practicing that play all week and it really paid off," Kemp said.
With the Rams leading 3-0, Liz Bruno went on a tear. She commanded the ball in her own half of the field and then came up-field when she split two defenders and simply outran them to the goal. Some sixty yards after she started, Bruno got her second score making it 4-0 Rams, the final tally.
Coach Kirk Bamford was "very pleased with everyone's effort as well as their hustle and execution." He said that's why they finished the regular season at 13-1-2. Now they're 14-1-2 and are heading to the FCIAC championship game.
