It’s been a long time coming.
Over the years, Rye High Head Coach Rich Savage has had great success, but some strong teams have stumbled at the finish line of Sectionals, losing on a late goal or in overtime.
Fifteen years ago, they were State and Section Class A champions. In other seasons, they blew through the opposition only to falter on the way to States. The 2020 squad took the Southern Large School Championship, and then the season was curtailed due to Covid. In 2021, they again shared the Sectional championship — this time with Clarkstown North — but didn’t advance when they lost on penalty kicks.
But the 2023 Garnets have turned those heartbreakers into nothing more than bad memories.
The 19-2 Garnets won the Section, beating powerhouse Albertus Magnus, and next travel to Wallkill in Orange County Saturday for the regional final against Section 9 champs Our Lady of Lourdes.
Boasting a rock-solid defense, Rye entered the Class A playoffs with a ten-game winning streak, yielding only a single goal to some very strong teams, including Arlington, this year’s Class AAA champs. The team kept their defensive streak going right through Sectionals, opening with a 4-0 win over Walter Panas and following that up with a 3-0 whitewashing of John Jay-Cross River. In the semifinals, Rye defeated three-seeded Tappan Zee 2-0.
But all that semifinal win did was pit the second-ranked Garnets against defending State and Section champs Albertus Magnus, a team that hadn’t lost in the Section since 2019. The powerhouse team recruits players and regularly travels the country playing nationally ranked teams. Not only that, the 17-2 Garnets had dropped a 1-0 encounter to the Falcons when they played each other at the end of September.
This time, when the two titans met on Sunday, Oct. 29, at Nyack High School, the Garnets applied pressure all over the field.
“We learned a lot from that regular-season loss,” said senior co-captain and center midfielder Maddy Walsh. “We knew we had to play our best game of the season, and we did.”
The teams fought to a scoreless first half, and things stayed that way for almost 15 minutes of the second stanza, when junior midfielder Lyla Keenan took a long shot that was blocked. But senior striker Isabel Harvey got to the ball first and put Rye ahead with her shot.
Though the Falcons fought hard to equalize, the Garnets withstood the pressure. Then Walsh picked off a pass in the middle of the pitch and made her way into the penalty box, where she laid the ball off to senior Paige Vanneck for the insurance goal.
Albertus Magnus coach Dan Samimi said afterward, “They looked like they really wanted it. Every pass we made went to the other team.”
The victory sent the new titleholders on a three-and-a-half-hour bus ride on Nov. 1, through a snowstorm to Chenango Forks High School outside Binghamton to play Section IV champs Owego Free Academy. It was still snowing on a cold, blustery afternoon when the teams took the field, and Rye immediately took command.
“Rye controlled the pace of the game and moved the ball around the field in icy and very difficult conditions,” Coach Savage said after.
Senior outside back Sage Ruttenberg opened the scoring off a corner kick from junior Bowyn Brown, banging the ball off the post and into the net. Brown set up the second goal as well, sending her corner kick to the foot of Charlotte Keenan, who hit a first-time shot past the keeper.
In the second half, Keenan would get the assist on a score by Harvey. Harvey would score her second and the team’s fourth and final goal with Walsh and sophomore Parker Calhoun assisting. Calhoun’s classmate, goalkeeper Tessa Labovitz, would earn the shutout with five saves.
The Garnets are having their storybook season, and that story of sweet vindication after years of triumph and setbacks continues.
