Titans ease past EP ahead of showdown

Kevin Pomeroy
Posted 10/2/14

It would be hard to blame the Toll Gate girls’ soccer team from looking ahead to today’s marquee showdown with Pilgrim, but the Titans still had to play Tuesday before they could devote their …

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Titans ease past EP ahead of showdown

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It would be hard to blame the Toll Gate girls’ soccer team from looking ahead to today’s marquee showdown with Pilgrim, but the Titans still had to play Tuesday before they could devote their full attention to the Pats.

And on Tuesday, against winless East Providence, Toll Gate’s focus was clearly not entirely on the Townies. But the Titans grabbed a 3-1 win anyway behind two goals from Hannah McNulty and another from Grace McGrath, and now they can actually look toward Pilgrim without fear of a letdown.

“We’ve just got to go back to practice tomorrow and figure it out, because we can’t play like that against Pilgrim,” said Toll Gate head coach Lonna Razza. “That’s for sure.”

Toll Gate improved to 6-2-2 with the win, and is one point – while playing one more game – ahead of Pilgrim, which is 6-2-1, for first place in Division II-Central.

The other three teams in the subdivision are winless, making the Titans and Pats the sole contenders for the division crown. East Providence dropped to 0-8-1 with the loss.

Toll Gate was in control the entire way against the Townies, getting a goal from McNulty in the third minute to take a quick 1-0 lead and then another from the sophomore star in the 23rd minute to go up 2-0.

The game tightened up some from there, as East Providence grabbed a late first-half goal and kept the score at 2-1 for most of the way until McGrath’s goal put it out of reach in the 74th minute.

“It’s almost like you play down to your competition,” Razza said. “(East Providence coach Angelo Pizzi’s) girls played well – I know they’re not having a great season – but they played well.”

The game had blowout potential all over it early on, with McNulty getting the scoring going and Toll Gate piling on corner kick after corner kick from there. McGrath took two in the sixth minute, one in the 16th minute and another in the 17th minute, but to no avail.

Then in the 23rd minute, McGrath took another corner that was cleared out of the box. She ran it down about 20 yards out on the right and passed a ball straight ahead to McNulty at the 6-yard line, who turned and fired a ball to the far post to make it 2-0.

That was McNulty’s 20th goal of the season.

“Two more today,” Razza said. “She can dish it off, she can receive it. She’s just fun to watch.”

East Providence never maintained any possession, but in the 39th minute the Townies created a counterattack and a through ball went to Grace Abrams. She had a breakaway until she was muscled off the ball by a toll Gate defender in the box, but she regrouped and sent a shot to the left post that got by goalkeeper Amber Francois to make it 2-1.

“I don’t think we judged the ball very well on the wet grass – getting our body in front of it, knocking it down,” Razza said. “The communication was a little off today. There were a couple of defensive breakdowns, but we’ll fix that tomorrow.”

The second half was much better. Although the goals didn’t follow, Toll Gate was dominant, getting quality chances from start to finish. McNulty was at the center of nearly all of them, as she sent five separate free kicks from just outside the box toward the goal, and she headed a ball over the crossbar in the 54th minute. In the 69th minute, McGrath headed a McNulty cross over the net on another great opportunity.

Finally, in the 74th minute, McNulty was awarded a free kick from just beyond the top-left corner of the box, and she gently floated a pass over the defense to a well-positioned McGrath in front of East Providence keeper Devon Federowicz. The ball skimmed the top of McGrath’s head enough to redirect it past Federowicz into the goal, making it 3-1.

“We definitely didn’t play perfect, but we got a win,” Razza said. “They played better in the second half. They stepped it up for those 40 minutes.”

Once the final whistle blew, the entire focus shifted to Pilgrim. Toll Gate has the fourth-best record in D-II, while the Pats have the fifth. The two teams are playing a division game against one another for the first time since 2005.

Pilgrim has won its last four games, while Toll Gate is 2-0-1 in its last three. The tie in that stretch was a 1-1 result with 7-2-1 Burrillville last Friday.

“I’ve been looking ahead to it since the beginning of the season,” Razza said. “I’m probably more nervous about it than they are.”

The game will be held at Bend Street at 6:30 p.m., with Pilgrim serving as the home team.

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