BY BRIAN FEESSouthern Tier Sports Report
HORSEHEADS — For the Elmira girls’ soccer team the 1-0 lead was gone and they found themselves in a tie game in the Section IV, Class AAA final with Ithaca on Thursday night.
Gianna Capilli lined up a free kick, which hit off Hailey Hamilton and into the net lifting the Elmira girls to the eighth sectional title in Express program history with a 2-1 win over Ithaca.
“Gigi had an amazing goal in the box,” Hailey Hamilton said. “It was great, I dove for it. I don’t really know what happened.”
Hamilton didn’t even realize the ball went in right away.
“I was like what is happening,” Hamilton said. “She picked me up and was like we scored and I was like ‘Oh, my God.’”
The championship is the first for Elmira since they shared a title in 2023, and their first outright title since 2021.
Elmira struck first in the game. With Ithaca on the attack in the opening minutes the Express countered as Reiley Hamilton raced down the field and scored at 35:13 of the first half to make it a 1-0 game.
“Amazing, for all the hard work we have put in, it feels good,” Reiley Hamilton said. “First five minutes, I’m really glad to push the team up and make us feel confident about the game.”
The game stayed 1-0 through the half until Ithaca tied the game with 25:53 left off a corner kick.
“My heart just dropped and I said we have to get this back,” Reiley Hamilton said.
For a young group this title is special.
“Unbelievable tonight,” Elmira coach Zach Sarno said. “I feel like the last couple of years we have been incredibly young. We had some years we were young. The crazy thing tonight, we started nine sophomores, one senior and one freshman. They were on varsity and there were some growing pains and they worked through it and obviously the kids deserve all the credit. I’m just here to facilitate the game. The game plan worked, the energy was great.
“Knowing we were so young we were young the last couple years, but we are a year older now. We are young, but we knew we would be better and we will continue to get better. You are going to have days you have to fix things and it’s not working. Since we have had two weeks off I thought we had the best two weeks of practice. The mindset was totally locked in and ready to go. I’m not overly surprised we were ready to go today and got the job done.”
Sarno knew on the free kick if you get traffic in front of the goal it can lead to good things.
“In free kicks, especially when you get a chance like that you want to get the ball in a dangerous spot and even if it doesn’t go in you want to get traffic in front of the goal and see what happens,” Sarno said. “You get traffic in front of the goal and good things happen. We knew going into today it was going to be a close game. We played the 1-0 both times, we beat them 1-0, they beat us 1-0. Ithaca is a great team, we knew that going in. We knew we would have to be all in to get the job done.”
With a big group of sophomores on the team it’s special to win a title this early in their careers.
“We all started on JV (a couple years ago), we didn’t know we were going to be up here (so early in their careers),” Reiley Hamilton said. “It feels great to finally win a sectional title. Especially with my twin sister here. I didn’t know we were going to get it this early (as sophomores), honestly.”
“We worked so hard for this,” Hailey Hamilton said.
For Sarno he never doubted this group was capable of doing something special.
“Some people said maybe next year, you’ll be a year older and I never bought into that,” Sarno said. “I said we are a year older this year, why not us. Pretty much all of us were ninth graders last year, we were basically a JV team. Not talent wise, that’s why they are on varsity, but numbers wise we could have been a JV team.”
Now it’s onto regionals for the Express and the hope is to get off to a fast start just like they did on Thursday.
“I think our next big goal is to just get an early goal,” Reiley Hamilton said. “It worked here, we got an early goal and it boosts our confidence so much.”
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PHOTOS BY BRIAN FEES
PHOTO GALLERY FROM THE GAME:
