Last week, Winters Mill’s girls soccer coach Andy Hicks had his team watch their disappointing 2-1 overtime loss on penalty kicks to Fallston in the Class 2A State finals from last November.
Junior forward Madison Cyr did not like what she saw.
“We watched [the game] the other day and everyone’s mood just went down,” she said. “We think about it everyday, hoping it will motivate us to go further.”
“The girls are still very bitter with how the season ended last year which is the fuel to our fire,” said Hicks.
Cyr put together an amazing 2009 season. She won the Carroll County Player of the Year award after scoring a league-high 14 goals and adding three assists. She was also was named to the Baltimore Sun’s All-Metro First Team.
Despite all the personal accolades, Cyr is the consummate team player and thoughts of the Falcons’ loss still linger in the back of her mind.
“One memory that sticks out is when [Fallston] scored that last goal and we knew we had lost,” said Cyr. “It was just horrible.”
But that is all in the past. This weekend marks the beginning of a new season for No. 7 Winters Mill, which returns eight of it’s 11 starters and will be led by Cyr.
“Madison brings a lot to the table when it comes to the team. She leads by example,” said Hicks. “As far as hard work goes, she works hard one hundred percent of the time. She is the kind of player that knows she can’t be successful without the help of her teammates.”
The junior midfielder turned forward has a reputation for being a “natural goal scorer.”
“She has a world class touch on the ball,” said Hicks. “Her biggest attribute is that she puts herself in dangerous positions which makes her extremely hard to mark, especially on set pieces.”
Last season, she had a stretch in which she scored eight goals in four games. In the playoffs, she was even more dangerous. In the Class 2A West regional final game against North Hagerstown, she scored the game-tying goal and the Falcons went on to the 2-1 victory.
In the state semifinals against Glenelg, Cyr scored the game-winning goal in a 1-0 victory to propel Winters Mill into the big game. How is she able to net so many goals?
“It just accidentatly happens,” explained Cyr. “I get the ‘ugly’ goals as coach says because they don’t mean to happen, I’m just there at the right time and they go in.”
“When I say that she scores ‘trash’ goals, that is not meant as a negative statement,” explained Hicks. “The meaning by that is that she can always score the ‘pretty’ goals but what makes her so dangerous is that she has that ability to score the ‘trash’ or ugly goals.”
You don’t score 14 goals all on accident, its not a fluke that Cyr knows how to finish when presented with the opportunity.
“The beauty of this game is that it doesn’t matter what the goal looks like because they don’t draw pictures on scoreboards,” Hicks said. “I cannot tell you why she is in the right place at the right time, she just knows.”
