GETTING HER KICKS: Princeton Day School girls’ soccer player Adriana Salzano kicks the ball in recent action. Junior star Salzano scored a team-high 12 goals this fall to spark the PDS attack. The Panthers posted a final record of 12-7, advancing to the Prep B state semifinal and the New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association (NJSIAA) Non-Public A quarters. (Photo by Frank Wojciechowski)
By Bill Alden
For Chris Pettit, this fall ended up being the “nearly” season for his Princeton Day School girls’ soccer team.
Competing in three postseason tournaments, PDS showed flashes of brilliance but fell short of playing for a title, advancing to the Prep B state semis, the New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association (NJSIAA) Non-Public A quarters, and losing on a late goal in the Mercer County Tournament quarterfinals.
While Panther head coach Pettit, whose team ended up with a 12-7 record, would have liked to see his young squad play for a championship, he saw plenty of progress.
“There were a lot of positives,” asserted Pettit. “Shelby [Ruf] did great in goal, we tightened it up defensively and we gave a lot of minutes to our freshmen. We improved in certain areas that we worked on. We didn’t really give up many goals from corners and we scored a lot of corners. Things like that were positives.”
In a 3-2 overtime loss to Rutgers Prep in Prep B semis, PDS produced one of its best efforts of the fall.
“We were winning 2-1 for a good portion of the second half and they scored with the last kick of the game,” said Pettit, who got two goals from junior star Adriana Salzano in the defeat. “We ran out of steam a little bit and we were hanging on for the last few minutes of extra time with a couple of minutes away from it going to penalties, and they scored again. On the bus going there and from the moment we started warming up, you could see the girls were laser-focused. They really embraced that underdog mentality. We talked a couple of weeks after that game and talked about how do we bring that every weekend. It was a good game.” more