PHOTOS: LCM's 12-win season ends in opening playoff round

Posted: October 26th 2023

By BRIAN CUNNIFF

CapeAtlanticLive.com

The Lower Cape May Regional High School girls soccer team played well enough this season to earn a No. 5 seed for the 16-team South Jersey Group II Tournament.

Unfortunately, the Lady Tigers drew an outstanding 12 seed in the opening round.

Manchester Township, hailing from the very competitive Shore Conference, scored once in the first half and finally put the game away with another tally a couple minutes from full time to beat Lower, 2-0, and advance in the tournament.

“We played them last year to a tough loss in our first game of the season, so we knew a little bit about them,” Lower coach Darren Rutherford said. “It was not the ideal matchup we were looking for. But that’s the way it goes.”

Lower defended for nearly all of the first half and did it rather well, but Manchester’s Katelyn Carney broke the deadlock when she calmly slotted home the rebound of teammate Madison Cubbison’s shot that struck the crossbar.

Lower enjoyed some possession in the Manchester third of the field much more in the second and half and created a couple of chances. The best came when Sianna King won the ball away from Manchester goalkeeper Kaia Buckley and whizzed a shot that Buckley tipped before it struck the outside of the left post.

Shay Juralewicz put the game away for Manchester (11-8) by scoring on a long free kick with two minutes to go.

“We were hustling in the first half but we needed to play a little smarter,” Rutherford said. “We did a better job of that in the second half. We generated more chances, we had more pressure and we had more intensity in the second half.”

Lower’s season ends at 12-4-1. The Lady Tigers won the Cape-Atlantic United Conference title this fall. The championship represented a solid turnaround for the team’s six seniors, who won just six games over their first two seasons in the program.

The seniors include King, Kaitlyn McGuigan, Tessa Hueber, Braelyn Brant, Doaa Mohamed and Isabelle Hristov.

“This is my first full graduating class,” said Rutherford, in his fourth season as head coach. “I wouldn’t have wanted to do it with a different group. We had a tough couple years but we came out better for it and reached our goal of winning a championship.

“It’s tough to lose a playoff game. I’ve been there as a player. It’ll be a tough couple days for them, but I want them to look back on what we accomplished and be happy with what we did.”