We’ve been calling Poly/Lakewood football the Moore League Super Bowl, so it’s probably time to crown this fantastic rivalry with a moniker, too. The Moore League World Cup Final, perhaps?
Both meetings between Poly and Wilson’s girls’ soccer teams last season ended with one team in tears, consumed by emotion—due to the fierceness of the rivalry, and the quality of competition between them (in a league that has been a cut below both of them for a few years), the Rabbits and Bruins have long had one of the Moore League’s most emotional rivalries. After a back-and-forth 2-2 draw on Tuesday, there’s no doubt it’s also one of the city’s most physical battles—and exciting, too.
How brutal was it? In addition to injuries on both sides, two goals were scored on penalty kicks, both on deserved calls. Scoring started 30 minutes in, after the first PK was awarded to the Bruins’ Kaitlin Hellman. Poly fans protested because her hand touched the ball, but our video appears to show that she was shoved pretty hard in the back, causing her arm to go up. Hellman drilled it to the left corner of the net, giving Wilson a 1-0 lead.
Poly got the equalizer just a few minutes into the second half on an early candidate for goal of the year from Ebonie Buenrostro, who hit a turnaround 30-yard strike into the top left corner of the goal, that was placed so perfectly Wilson’s keeper Breegan Saller didn’t even have much of a shot at it. “She’s been working on that all season long,” said Poly coach Teri Collins. “She scored two like that in the Aliso Cup—she has deadball service.”
Wilson again took the lead about halfway through the second half after Emily Dillon, who had been putting great pressure on all game, finally broke through the Poly D, and put a rabbit shot through the hands, and over the head of Rabbit keeper Celeste Moncure, who tried to play Dillon close. But with ten minutes remaining in the game, Poly’s Jazmine Rhodes had her relentless attack rewarded with a PK after she was taken down in the box. Rhodes went left pocket as well, and the game knotted at 2-2, where it would finish.
There was plenty of griping from both sidelines about the officiating, with Wilson fans steaming as they left the field after the game, due to what they felt as an unfair shift in the strictness of calls in the second half (Wilson coach Jason Kirkwood called the officiating “inconsistent”). Still, despite the frustration of feeling like his team was fighting against the refs, and the sting of giving up two leads, Kirkwood remained positive. “It was what we expected—a tough battle with Poly, our main competition in the league. We got a positive result on the road.”
While acknowledging there were “erratic stretches” in the officiating, Collins said she didn’t see an undue shift in the level of plays whistled. “These games are so much fun,” she said, referring to the five-deep crowd that lined Poly’s side. “We don’t get a lot of them.” Expressing pride at the way her team battled back into the game despite being down twice, Collins said, “Good teams find a way to win—we didn’t win, but we played hard and found a way to get back in the game.”
Credit to the excellent middles on both teams, who helped push the tempo and keep the game exciting on both ends of the field—in particular, Wilson’s Kim Marshall and Poly’s Megan Brock and Alexis Leyba competed hard. And, in a great display of sportsmanship that underlined the positive nature of a high school rivalry, the game closed with a fitting image. Rhodes, who had fought so hard for position in the Wilson box all game, and earned the equalizing PK, was trying to do the same as time expired, and fell awkwardly on her knee, twisting it. As the final whistle blew, she was on the ground holding the knee—while being looked over, and eventually helped up, by Wilson’s Renee Mendiola, further proof that while this is one of the league’s fiercest rivalries, it’s also one of the classiest.