No. 1 McDonogh knocks off No. 2 Mercy after trailing early

Trailing 1-0 early in the match with No. 2 Mercy didn’t sit well with McDonogh junior midfielder Ashley Spivey.

“I came in ten minutes into the game and I was ready to get that goal back,” said Spivey, who did not make the start because of Senior Day.  “We thought this is ridiculous, we should not be down 1-0 right now, so we just found some fire and got it back.”

The University of Maryland-bound, All-Metro selection made her presence felt immediately after entering the game in the 12^th minute.

Spivey headed-in a corner kick by Mallory Schonk to tie the game and sparked a five consecutive goal outburst by the top-ranked Eagles on their way to a 5-1 victory over the visiting Magic on Monday afternoon.

With the win, McDonogh improved to 11-0-1 overall and 8-0-1 in the IAAM A Conference, while Mercy dropped to 11-2-2 and 4-1-1 respectively.

The Magic jumped out to an early lead after freshman midfielder Anna Borkowski finished a pass from junior Alexis Prior-Brown in the fifth minute.  Borkowski beat Eagles’ goalie Morgan Ruhl, who came out of the goal to charge the ball, and pushed it into the open net.

“You couldn’t have asked for a better start,” said Mercy coach Doug Pryor.  “I thought that we would be going downhill at that point.  But good teams answer, they answered and they started going down the hill and we couldn’t catch them.”

Junior forward Taylor Cummings scored the first of her two goals with 5:49 left in the first half to give the Eagles a 2-1 lead after she headed-in a cross pass from freshman Anna Bialczak.

“Last year, they beat us in the playoffs and we haven’t played them since so it’s been like a revenge thing,” said Cummings, referring to last year’s 1-0 upset to Mercy in the conference quarterfinals.  “It’s something that we’ve wanted the entire season and it’s our Senior Day so when we came out, we wanted to play hard.”

She added: “The first ten minutes wasn’t as good as we wanted but we stepped it up big time in the end.”

McDonogh dominated possession in the second half and kept the pressure on Mercy’s defense.  Two minutes into the second half, Spivey carried the ball past two defenders and crossed it to Bialczak, who finished into the right corner past Magic keeper Rachel Bourne (seven saves).

Later, Spivey finished again, this time with the assist from Cummings, as she ran down the pass and used a tough angle to put the ball into the far post.

Cummings capped the scoring with 12 minutes to play, finishing a pass from freshman Casey Martinez.

The Eagles’ last three games have come against No. 4 John Carroll, No. 3 Archbishop Spalding and No. 2 Mercy, in that order.  McDonogh won handily against the Patriots and Magic, and tied the Cavaliers after trailing.

“Playoff is obviously the second season and none of these results matter, that’s the first thing we have to remember,” said McDonogh coach Harry Canellakis. “I was really proud of the three performances because we’ve been banged up and never in any of those three games have we been at full strength…”

“We’ll probably see them again in another week or two, so hopefully we learn from [this loss]…and we build from there,” said Pryor.

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