Corner kick spurs Baldwin over East Meadow

Count the Baldwin Lady Bruins (6-5-4) among those who believe timing is everything after they knocked off No. 6 East Meadow (8-4-3), 2-0 last Saturday in the first round of the Nassau Class AA girls’ soccer playoffs.

Less than three minutes after entering her first varsity soccer game, Alyssa Gangi ended up in the right place at the right time — the receiving end of a corner kick from senior N’Dea Johnson — and made the most of her perfect placement. The freshman redirected the kick into the lower corner of East Meadow’s goal with just six seconds left in the first half and changed the entire complexion of the game. “We weren’t aggressive enough and they stayed with [the kick] the whole way,” East Meadow coach Adam Hananel said. “They had one opportunity and the ball ended up in the net. It deflates you a little bit [at halftime].”

Gangi’s last-second score in the first half, in a game controlled by the Lady Jets, allowed Baldwin to put the focus on its defense, recorded its third consecutive shutout. Junior goalie Amber Harrison stopped all seven shots she faced in the win and continues to anchor a defense that has had a huge part in the Lady Bruins 4-1-2 mark in their last six games. “We went into the game very loose and felt that all of the pressure was on them,” Lady Bruins coach Darius Burton said of East Meadow, which played in the Nassau Class AA championship game last fall.

Baldwin advanced to a quarterfinal round matchup at No. 3 MacArthur after presstime.

Sophomore Ayanna Smith, the Lady Bruins’ top goal scorer, provided additional insurance in the second half, forcing a turnover deep in East Meadow’s zone and converting it into a second goal. “She pressured the sweeper, stole the ball and put it by the goalie,” Burton said.

As the two regular-season meetings between the teams suggested — both ended in ties (0-0 on Oct.22, and 2-2 on Sept. 15) — another closely contested battle was expected despite both teams playing at less than full strength. The Lady Jets were without one of their top scoring weapons, senior Luisa Echeverry and freshman sweeper Amanda Ashe, while the Lady Bruins have an ever-growing injury list that became longer in warmups when senior Raquel Mitchel went down with a leg injury and junior Allie Rogers was hurt in the second half. The loss of Mitchel on top of the absence of junior Nicole Gardianos led to Burton’s decision to get Gangi on the field.

“They had very few opportunities but happened to capitalize on them,” Hananel said, as his team controlled the time-of-possession battle. “It was one of those days. They had chances to capitalize on and we didn’t, and their goalie made a couple of good saves.”