West Deptford Girls Soccer Wins South Jersey Title

Tina Furfari saw the West Deptford girls soccer team's hopes float to her on a throw-in.

With the crowd chanting down with the PA announcer's count of the final 10 seconds of the first half, Furfari seized her moment when the ball came skittering across the turf, knowing her teammates needed a boost in a scoreless game.

“As soon as I heard 'two,' I was about to kick it,” she said. “It went in and everybody started screaming.”

It would be the only goal the Eagles would need to clinch the South Jersey, Group 2 title, but they didn't stop there, racking up two more in the second half in the 3-0 victory and the team's first sectional title since 1999.

If West Deptford was trying to find a way to turn the tide, they almost certainly found it off Furfari's foot—the Haddonfield offense, which had been almost permanently encamped in the Eagles' end all through the first half, all but disappeared at halftime.

It made things a bit easier on keeper sophomore keeper Maggie Davis, who bull-rushed a couple of breakaways to deny the Bulldawgs their best opportunities of the first half, and was able to catch her breath a bit in the latter 40 minutes.

“It was a lot of pressure in the first half, and I just had to keep it out of the net,” she said. “We have a great defense, and I know if I go out and I just make a mistake and something happens, I know they're there to back me up.”

Meanwhile, the Eagles' offense poured on its own pressure, forcing Haddonfield keeper Taylor Sehdev to make a couple of saves in the first ten minutes of the half, before Tina Doughtery took a pass from Sam Budd and touched a low, spinning shot off Sedhev's left hand and into the net for West Deptford's second goal of the game.

“We were so happy about that one goal, but we had to keep it up,” Furfari said. “We were positive, and everything was just coming together.”

Even with the insurance goal, West Deptford didn't let up, clearly bent on ensuring nothing would stop them from scoring their first victory over Haddonfield in three years.

After the Eagles made a couple key stops on defense—including a free kick from just outside the 18 that Haddonfield's Kylie Kirk couldn't thread around the West Deptford wall—Budd took a pass from teammate Amber Jones, slipped two defenders and whipped a shot past a diving Sehdev, just inside the post, to put the exclamation point on the game.

For Budd, a sophomore, the first win of her high school career against the Eagles' rival couldn't have come at a better time.

“This is a great experience, especially when it counts,” she said.