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Pleasant View • It was a wet and wild afternoon for Weber on Thursday as the Warriors edged previously undefeated Fremont, 3-2, with an overtime penalty kick after a lengthy lightning delay.
After a questionable foul was called on Fremont in the Weber 18-yard box near the end of the first overtime session, senior Cassidy McCormick stepped to the penalty spot and shot her team to victory over their Weber County rivals.
"I was just thinking I need to finish this for my team," McCormick said about stepping up to the penalty spot. "[Fremont] is always a tough rivalry game I'm glad that this time it turned out in our favor."
Weber had to overcome a lot in order to deal Fremont its first loss of the season. After the game started with slightly overcast skies, sophomore Ellie Maughan put the Warriors up early with a side-footed volley off of a poor Fremont clearance attempt in the eighth minute.
Two minutes later, mother nature decided to put a hold on Weber's fast start.
After the referee had halted play and sent the players back to the locker rooms for a lightning delay, the skies opened up as Weber County was hit with a rain and lightning storm.
"It was hard to deal with," Weber coach Felipe Diaz said about the long weather delay. "We started so focused on the game and mentally prepared only to play nine minutes. We go up 1-0, but the weather killed the strategy after that. But the girls did a really good job after they let us know we were going to come back."
As a team captain, McCormick was one of the players in charge of making sure that the rest of the team was ready to perform after not playing for an extended period.
"It was frustrating when the game got called in the first half," McCormick said after the game. "But the whole time we were talking about the game, what we needed to do, what we needed to focus on and how we needed to come out. We came out strong."
The strong start after the weather delay was capped off by freshman Adree Johnson as her free kick in the 14th minute deflected off of the fingertips of Fremont goalkeeper Morgan Green into the top netting. After a nearly two-hour long first half, the Warriors went into the halftime break up 2-0.
Fremont came out desperate in the second half, putting pressure on Weber wheneverit could. A penalty kick by Randee Nicholas cut the lead to one in the 50th minute before fellow senior Ellee Iverson tied the game with a long-distance shot that went over the fingers of Weber goalkeeper Claudia Vinacco.
After a frantic finish to the second half with several scoring chances, the game went to overtime, just as it had in the teams' previous matchup. Unlike the previous game, it was the Warriors who came out on top as Diaz and company celebrated their much deserved rivalry win.
Storylines
R Weber handed Fremont its first loss of the season with a 3-2 overtime victory.
• Weber improved to 2-1 in overtime games.
• Fremont had not allowed more than two goals in a game until Thursday.