Fights, goals and crazed fans with cowbells were all present at Cabrini’s 2-1 win over Immaculata on Wednesday, Oct. 8.
Both teams wasted no time making their mark on the game. Cabrini senior striker Mike McDevitt had two shots on goal 20 minutes into the game barely missing both.
Immaculata then followed up at the eight-minute mark, by getting three consecutive blasts at net only to be blocked by Cabrini defenders.
During the second half, Cabrini kept showing their dominance on offense creating shot after shot leading the Cavs to rack up a total of 22 shots with 12 being on net.
In 32 minutes, freshman back Patrick Tobey hit the cross bar on a shot after a bad clearance by Immaculata.
“It was a battle between the two best teams in the league, so we knew the game was important,” junior midfielder Jason Moran said.
Cabrini finally broke the ice after a scoreless 60 minutes, when junior midfielder Andrew Jacobs scored in the 26 minute off a corner pass by junior forward Justin McCall.
Jacobs then gave an encore 59 seconds later when he scored again off a brilliant strike outside the box and parallel to the goal.
“It was 59 seconds later,” Moran said when asked did he expect the second goal to come a minute after the first.
Both goals were acknowledged by some Cabrini fans waiving cowbells in the air and making the Immaculata fans a little uneasy towards the ringing.
Immaculata would answer with a goal by senior forward Kieran Keelan four minutes later, leading the Immaculata fans to realize that since they don’t have any cowbells of their own they’ll just scream at the top of their lungs at all the Cabrini fans instead.
Cabrini didn’t let the goal or the fans distract them as they continued to create chances and push forward.
“There was already bad blood between both teams,” Moran said.
With 16 minutes left in the game, freshman midfielder Eric Collins had a header off a corner that just went over the net.
A minute later Cabrini keeper junior Bryan Johnson made a great save deflecting a scorching shot ten feet out over the cross bar.
Immaculata’s frustration began to spill out with 11 minutes to go in the game when a foul was committed on senior forward Justin McCall.
McCall got up to let the Immaculata defender know about it, when Immaculata’s sophomore Mitchell Torh came swooping in like a hawk on it’s prey to push McCall down head first.
But all the fighting did was give Cabrini more motivation to score with the Cavs putting the ball on net four more times during the last seven minutes of the game, with one of the shots hitting the crossbar.
The Cavs went on to win three days later on Oct. 11, beating Keystone College 3-1.
