Spartan defense rises to occasion to help goalie Donnelly

TYNGSBOROUGH – When St. Mary’s keeper Bailey Bruckmann went down with 11 minutes to go in Tuesday’s MIAA Division 3 North girls soccer quarterfinal, the pressure was squarely on freshman Katie Donnelly, who had to take her place.But it was also on a lot of other people too ? particularly the defense.”It was scary,” said Amanda Donohoe, one of the trio of defenders entrusted with keeping Greater Lowell traffic from getting too intense in front of the net.”We had to do whatever we could to keep (Katie) out of harm’s way,” said Victoria Viger, another one of the three.For the most part, they did. Greater Lowell’s Anna Panagiotopoulos did manage to put one by Donnelly, and even though she was the object of the defense’s attention for the entire game, they came away pretty happy with the job they did.”We knew she was the one we had to shut down,” Viger said.”Once (Bailey) went out,” said Rachel Stueve, another defender, “we just had to make sure that we kept them away from (Katie). We couldn’t let them get off any shots from up close.”The Spartans achieved that objective. Panagiotopoulos’ goal came from about 20 feet out, and it was shot through a maze of players. By then, however, Donnelly had more than proven herself capable of coming up with big stops.Donnelly had played in the latter stages of Saturday’s 12-0 romp over Excel, which gave her some experience playing at the varsity level after toiling all year for the JVs. But, as coach Jim Foley noted, there’s a difference between doing mopup duty in a rout and being thrust in the middle of a tight tournament game.”And she did very well,” Foley said.About five minutes after she took over for Bruckmann, Panagiotopoulos – perpetual motion for the entire game – put a shot right on Donnelly. But the freshman calmly caught it, and then steered another shot away moments later.”That just reinforced our confidence in her,” said Donohoe. “We had faith in her before that.”Stueve’s savvy helped keep things steady back there too. With the minutes dwindling down, she got the ball in the corner, Donnelly’s right, and proceeded to do some fancy dribbling to take some time off the clock.”That’s senior leadership in action,” Foley said. “She knew that the objective at that point was to waste time.””I’d asked the referee how much time there was left, so I knew that anything I did was going to help take time off the clock. I knew I’d have to get it out of there eventually, but at that point, wasting time was important,” Stueve said.Steve Krause can be reached at [email protected].