Andrade’s saves, Brownlie’s goal give Monroe penalty kick victory in CJ3 final

Monroe won its first sectional title in over 30 years with a hard fought and thrilling 1-0 win over 6-seed Manalapan that ended in penalty kicks in the Central Jersey, Group 3 final at 4-seed Monroe Thursday night.
The win moves the Falcons into the state group semifinal on Monday at home against the South Jersey champion Eastern, a 3-2 penalty kick winner over Central Regional.
The battle of penalty kicks was just as close as the 100 minutes of soccer that preceded it as the two teams had battled to a scoreless deadlock.
In the end, it would take seven rounds of penalty kicks to determine the winner when Monroe’s Kaitlin Brownlie sizzled a low shot on the ground that slipped into the left corner of the goal for the fourth Falcon score.
Monroe goalie Natalia Andrade would do the rest, making a diving stop on a on a shot to her right by Manalapan’s Guiliana Naletilic to close out the win. It was the second straight clutch stop for Andrade, who went to her left to make a must-have save in round six as the Braves’ Constantina Papadakis tried to end it all with a stroke of her foot.
It was a tour de force by Andrade, who came up with two back to back stops as Monroe faced elimination at the hands of Manalapan for the third straight year.
“(She‘s) a rock,” Monroe coach Christian Jessop said of his goalie. “She’s the type of character that it doesn’t faze her. It was amazing. for her to make that save at the end, I can not speak enough for what she does. It was all attitude and all mentality that she takes into it.
“You look and say, that stop, when it’s tied 3-3, where they had the opportunity to win it, and they didn‘t. And then for us to bury another one and her to get another stop, that’s amazing on her.”
For Andrade, the clutch moments in goal were handled the same way that she had fended off the Manalapan shooters throughout the entire game.
“At the end of the day, all you can really do is your best,” Andrade said after emerging victorious from the pressure cooker. “I was just trying to read them, look where they were looking, the normal goalie stuff. I guess it worked. I was just reading the player and going with my gut.
“It was a hard shot,” Andrade added of the final save that ended the game. “(I didn’t know she was coming to my right) until the last second. I was kind of just looking at her plant foot. I just knew I had to do whatever I could do to make the save. And I knew I wasn’t going to let it in.”
In between Andrade’s two, final, clutch saves, Monroe got the game winner off the foot of Brownlie, who was not even among the first five players who would take a crack at ending the game. But after both Monroe’s Misan Uduaghan and Manlapan’s Devan Rosenzweig scored in round five to tie the penalty kicks at 3-3, it became more clear that Brownlie’s number was going to be called.
“It was really nerve-racking,” Brownlie said. “Especially when you see one teammate walk up after another teammate and you’re like, ‘Oh God, this is actually coming to me now.’ But I really just had to keep my mind all on myself. I couldn’t worry about whether other people made it or missed it. I just had to know that I’m confident enough in myself that I’m going to make it.
“I was really stressed out,” Brownlie added of stepping up to take the shot. “I just had to block out all the noise. I did what I do in practice. I set up the ball all the way on the right side of the PK spot. I didn’t know where I was going to shoot it. I just hit it as hard as I could.
“I wanted to keep it on the floor. I saw a lot of people, not just our team, skying it. And I was like, ‘I need to keep my composure and keep it hard and low.’”
Monroe had jumped out to a 1-0 lead in penalty kicks after both teams had missed their opening efforts high and Meredith Artz drilled one into the upper left corner of the goal to start the second round.
The Falcons would go up 2-0 on Sofia Gartner’s shot inside the left post at the start of round three, but Manalapan’s Zina Hammarstrom matched that score to pull the Braves to within 2-1.
After a Monroe miss, Lyla Ottenheimer tied things up for Manalapan when she hit a low shot into the left side of the goal to complete round four, paving the way for Uduaghan and Rosenzweig’s goals that set the stage for the sixth and seventh rounds.
“You never know when you go to PKs,” Monroe’s Jessop said. “What was amazing to see was that, even after we missed the first one, the girls just rallied together, stayed calm and were able to find ways to just take a moment and breathe.
“It’s crazy. You’re stepping up there in PKs in a moment like this and with a crowd like this, and to be able to do that.”
It was a breakthrough win for Monroe, which ended its 32 year sectional title drought after having been knocked out of the sectional tournament two years in a row by Manalapan, including a 1-0 loss in last year’s semifinal when the Falcons had entered the tournament unbeaten.
“For us to finally be able to do it on our own turf against them, it’s even extra special,” Jessop said. “For 100 minutes these girls played their hearts out. We had opportunities. There were a couple of great saves at each end. There were some opportunities we didn’t finish and they might not have finished either. I know our defense was able to come up big a couple of times when they had an opportunity and we were able to cut off the angle and step it.
“I’m just so proud of the girls, that even when it was (to PKs) they stayed calm, collected and did what they had to do.”
As dramatic and exciting as the win was for Monroe, it was a heartbreaking defeat for a Manalapan team that had reached the final by bumping off 3-seed Howell 3-2 and the 7-seed, Hunterdon Central, 2-0.
“We have worked hard all season,” Braves coach John Rogers said after the game. “It’s been a great ride. We have only grown as a group as each round has gone.
“Tonight we just didn’t execute in the final third and we left some opportunities there that we definitely wish we had back. We definitely didn’t want that going to PKs and we felt like we could have made some chances count early on. And we didn’t.
“They’re a really good team. We’ve seen them now three years in a row in states. They earned it. They fought hard, they deserved that win.
“They know us, we know them and it was really just a chess match all game. It comes down to a couple of kicks and, unfortunately, it just didn’t go our way tonight.”
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Michael Holcombe can be reached at [email protected]