Hopewell rocks Notre Dame to stake claim as CVC’s best
HOPEWELL TWP. >> By the time Katarina Nilsson and her Hopewell Valley girls soccer teammates were done running Notre Dame ragged, Irish coach Ken Mason simply took his hat and tipped it to the best team in the Colonial Valley Conference.
Nilsson scored two and set up one for the Bulldogs, who rocked Notre Dame in the opening minute of each half and rolled to a resounding 5-0 victory over the defending Mercer County Tournament champion on Monday night.
“That Nilsson is the best player I’ve seen around here in a while and I’ve been watching soccer for quite a while,” Mason said. “My defense is pretty good (and) she made them look silly a couple of times, which is hard to do. She’s phenomenal.”
Nilsson, a senior committed to Northeastern, scored a goal-of-the-season nominee in the opening minute of the second half when she took a pass from Sam Barnes, twisted her defender into the ground with a series of moves and smashed a shot past a helpless goalkeeper.
“She’s unstoppable,” senior Sabrina Schrader said. No really, she is. Nilsson has 13 goals in six games despite being the focus of every defense she plays against.
“If I have two people on me, there’s going to be someone else who’s open,” Nilsson said. “I can always drop the ball back, they can play wide ... we have amazing outside forwards. I know I can trust (my midfielders) to play someone else forward and they can always score goals, too.”
Nilsson, both in her own eyes and those of coach John McGinley, has improved the most with her distribution. She set up the Bulldogs’ first goal 57 seconds into the game by lofting a pretty pass into Schrader, who poked it past ND goalkeeper Megan Bromwell.
It was her sixth assist in as many games.
“She knows that people are going to be on her, that the pressure is going to be on her,” McGinley said. “She’s learned how to get others involved so they can’t just focus on her. Even if we don’t score, they are great chances and what it does is eventually create chances for her.”
Hopewell (6-0), however, is talented all over the field and has scored at least five goals in all but one of its games.
Schrader, a versatile boxto-box midfielder, notched the Bulldogs’ first two goals and would have had a third if not for the post.
Her second, in the 31st minute, crushed Notre Dame’s spirit after the visitors settled in and nearly had an equalizer through Taylor Whitlock, but the junior scuffed her shot straight at goalkeeper Sarah Ouslander.
Nilsson wrapped up the points 28 seconds after the restart before adding Hopewell’s fourth in the 51st minute. She worked a short corner with Julie Cane, receiving the ball at the top of the box and beating Bromwell to her near post with a powerful low shot.
The Bulldogs’ fifth was an own goal in the 78th minute.
“That’s what they do, they jump on you,” said Mason, whose Irish dropped to 3-1-1. “The first couple minutes, they stuck that one and we were hanging in ... I thought we had some of the better of the play in the first half, and then it just changed with that second and third goal. It was a dagger.”
Nilsson, of course, delivered it.
“Kat’s been a leader for the past four years,” Schrader said. “She’s someone we can all look up to. She’s a selfless player that works hard and definitely lives up to her name.” Schrader 2, Nilsson 2, OG. Nilsson, Barnes, Cane, N. Harkins, Finnegan. 5 (ND). 14 (HV). Bromwell 8 (ND). Ouslander 5 (HV).