Paige Vincent takes the ball out of trouble. The Fireballs, along with most of Garden City, traveled to Windsor, CT. for the annual Columbus Day Tournament and the girls rewarded their families with a stellar performance. Playing five games in three days, the girls dominated most of the action, coming away with 4 wins and a loss, scoring 17 goals with one against, and a tremendous amount of laughing and smiling off of the field. All with taking second place in their division. A world of thanks go out to coach Rob Malhame for not only coordinating a dinner for the Fireballs on Sunday, but for putting on a reception for seven of our teams at the Sheraton on Saturday night and then gathering the girls again for a trip to the pumpkin farm. The camaraderie that gets built over these weekends is something that the girls will cherish. And just think, they even fit some great soccer in over the weekend. Hopefully each of the 23 Garden City teams that played in the tournament had as nice of a time.

Fireballs with their hardware Starting out on Saturday it didn’t look like this was going to be a Fireball weekend. Facing a good Fairfield Flash team, the Fireballs came out on the short side of a 1-0 score although they controlled much of the match. As a matter of fact, the opposing coaches and parents commented many times that they were playing a tremendous team and they were lucky to get a goal. But that’s soccer. Maybe the three hour drive took something out of the legs of the GC girls or maybe it was the excitement of a weekend away that had them a step behind on finishing their runs at the goal. But that was the last game that the offense was stopped or somewhat asleep. Playing the remaining four games, the Fireballs peppered their opponents from all angles with the 17 goals coming from 10 different players. And playing flawlessly on defense, the girls rolled to four straight shutouts in the games that ended 4-0, 2-0, 4-0 and 7-0, against the Cromwell Icebreakers, Windsor Locks Magic, GC Blizzards and the Valley Girls, respectively. Quite an impressive weekend.

Alexa Kentfield, Michelle Rotondo and Kim Verderber enjoy the pumpkin farm

Courtney Chmil turns the corner Who’s that man in the striped shirt — Rick Harken Shannon McWilliams with the takeaway Christine Malhame fires the shot Michelle Rotondo with the pass out to Joanna Matuza Megan Walsh fights off the challenge