Div. 4 girls soccer: Drew Alley, Lauren Marjanski send South Hadley past Lynnfield in PKs (PHOTOS)

LEOMINSTER – Drew Alley is built for the big stage – she showed it during Tuesday night’s MIAA Division 4 state semifinal.

The South Hadley senior goalkeeper stepped between the pipes for penalty kicks with a stone cold face, and one-by-one denied No. 4 Lynnfield’s attempts. Alley stopped two of the three shots she faced, and then it was her turn to walk to the penalty stripe herself with a chance to seal the deal.

Lauren Marjanski, Allison Fleury and Cianna Gurek had all made their penalties. Alley could send the Tigers to the state title game with a make.

She calmly approached the ball, put a good boot on it, and buried it into the bottom right corner to give top-seeded South Hadley a 4-3 (4-1 on penalties) win on Tuesday night at Doyle Field.

“I was definitely not expecting to take a PK, but coach (Rich Marjanski) told me before we went out that if that’s the way things went, I would take the last shot,” Alley said. “I’m stoked that I could pull it out for my team.”

South Hadley advanced to play the winner of Wednesday night’s semifinal between No. 2 Sutton and No. 5 Littleton in the state championship game.

Alley has been the unsung hero of this team all season long. It’s easy to focus on the high-octane Tigers offense and their ability to put up crooked numbers, but Alley has held down the defense with incredible goal keeping.

Head coach Rich Marjanski was quick to appreciate what Alley brings to the table following the win.

“We’ve been practicing PKs for four, five weeks,” Rich Marjanski said. “She’s solid. She’s stopping all of my scorers on my team. It’s great competition during practice. She has a great knack for the ball, and she has a great first step to see where the ball is going… As a coach you watch every single player [when practicing PKs], and believe it or not she was one of the players that didn’t miss the net at all. I knew she was gonna make that one.”

Overtime, let alone penalty kicks, didn’t even seem like it was an option after Lauren Marjanski put home her third goal of the night – her second consecutive hat trick – with six minutes left in regulation to give South Hadley a 3-2 lead.

But with just over two minutes left, Marjanski was back helping on defense and tripped up a Lynnfield player in the box, which rewarded them with a penalty. The Pioneers tied the game with that kick, and extra soccer was required.

“I thought I blew the game for us,” Lauren Marjanski said. “I felt so awful. But I’m glad that we came back and won so that didn’t matter.”

The senior captain is now up to 43 goals this season, and there probably hasn’t been a more dominant player in any sport across western Massachusetts, maybe the state, than Marjanski. She shook off double teams and an aggressive Lynnfield defense to find enough space to operate.

“It’s always frustrating when people are double teaming me, so I just had to find their weaknesses and find a way to work around them,” Lauren Marjanski said. “It started to open up [after that].”

To lose in penalty kicks is heartbreaking – it’s the toughest way to go out in the postseason. The Tigers were fortunate to be on the right side of it Tuesday, but Lynnfield was the best team they’ve faced this year. Taking the No. 1 seed to penalties wasn’t a fluke.

“We played 100 minutes, two solid teams, and when you go to PKs, it’s tough to win or lose either way,” Rich Marjanski said. “Obviously it’s great to win, but [Lynnfield] is so good. They deserve to be here. It was a battle to the end.”

South Hadley’s troubles defending corner kicks continued, as two of Lynnfield’s three scores came off corners. The first one deflected off a Tigers defender and into the goal, with the second fooling Alley after a whiffed clearance attempt from a defender right in front of her.

If South Hadley wants to win a state title, Rich Marjanski needs his team to be much cleaner defending those set pieces.

“They were a little rattled at times, especially on corner kicks,” he said. “We gave up way too many corner kicks during the game. Some kids made mistakes, but they bounced right back. We just found a way to win.”

Only 80 minutes – or 100-plus like Tuesday – separates the Tigers from their second state championship in the last four tournaments. They’re ready for the task, and while the feeling of a thrilling win is unmatched, they know it’s back to business to prepare for Saturday.

“We got nothing left to do but go win,” Alley said. “That’s it.”