Kitchener comes from behind to stun King City in Ontario Cup thriller

September 16, 2015 · 0 Comments

The King City Royals (white) gave up two goals in the second half of the Ontario Cup final over the weekend to come up short in a 3-2 loss to Kitchener-Waterloo.
By Jake Courtepatte
The King City Royals and the Kitchener-Waterloo under-16 teams took similar paths to the girls Ontario Cup finals on Sunday, both finishing on top of their divisions in round-robin play.
The equality of the two teams was evident from the get-go at the Soccer Centre in Vaughan, playing in front of a packed-house at the home of Toronto FC’s reserve team. Both had reached the penultimate game by scores of 1-0, and over the first 20 minutes of play the defence shone in a stalemate.
It was Julia Garcea of King City who opened the scoring, tapping the ball into a yawning cage after a selfless effort from Melissa Diceman to cross it behind the final defender and fool the goaltender.
But the celebration didn’t last long. A scrum in front of the King City net saw a fluky goal tie it up for Kitchener-Waterloo only a few minutes later.
A takedown in the KW box was enough to put the Royals back in the lead only a few minutes after that, when Samantha Murphy easily converted on a penalty kick. They took a 2-1 lead into halftime.
It was Kitchener that came out strong in the second half, tying the game in the 46th minute off a highlight-reel strike. KW’s Isabelle Mihail curled it past the Royals keeper from about 35 yards out, going bar-down for the equalizer.
They took the lead for the first time in the game on another scrum in front of the King City net, with the defenders unable to clear a rebound.
Despite a number of close calls for the Royals as well as six minutes of stoppage time in the second, it was all KW needed to take home the provincial championship.
“I couldn’t be more proud of our girls,” said head coach Marc Hamilton. “It was a back-and-forth match. Our girls never gave up. They tried to execute a game plan that we pretty much implemented at the beginning of the season, it’s just a game of inches that we were unfortunately on the wrong side of.”
It was the Royals second-straight trip to the Ontario Cup finals, and the second time they came out on the wrong end of the score.
But Hamilton chocks it up as a “learning experience” for the girls.
“It’s been a great journey, I think the girls will learn from it. They probably won’t see it for the first few days, still licking their wounds a bit, but next year we’ll be back.”