The Record
PARK RIDGE — Freshman reserve Hannah Hanson scored twice and Park Ridge won the North 1, Group 1 girls soccer tournament title Friday with a 2-0 victory over defending champion Kinnelon.
“It’s exciting,” Hanson said after helping the Owls claim their first sectional title since 2007, “and I just tried my best.”
“I’ve had all the faith in her all year,” said first-year coach Molly Jaffe, whose Owls face Glen Ridge in Tuesday’s state semifinals. “She’s got so much speed, and you give her a task and she’ll get it done, and today she was just on.”
Hanson, 14, scored in the 25th minute to give top-seeded Park Ridge a 1-0 lead. She scored in the 76th minute on a breakaway. Senior Kelly McCann made four saves for the shutout.
“We obviously came out strong, had the first goal in the game, and I think that kind of gave us the strength we needed to move forward,” Jaffe said.
“Unfortunately, the stuff that we did to prepare for this game, in practice, we didn’t do in the game,” said Kinnelon coach Steve Racine. “We made a couple of mental mistakes and we just didn’t perform well against a team that was really well-motivated and well-coached and athletically better than us. We had to do some things to compensate for that and we just didn’t today.”
— Greg Mattura
