By Eric Sprott (Contact / Staff Bio)
March 28, 2008 - 12:14 a.m. EST

WESTMINSTER — After needing extra time to push past Pickens a week ago, the Seneca High School girls’ soccer team found itself in a similar spot Thursday night after a sluggish start against West-Oak.

After falling behind 2-0 in the first half, the Bobcats (5-4-1, 3-3 Western AAA) made a strong comeback behind the play of Emily Nicholson for a 3-2 win that was decided in penalty kicks.

Seneca’s Krystal Goss and Courtney Pund were able to connect on their penalty kicks, as Bobcats’ goalkeeper Casy Carson didn’t allow No. 9 West-Oak to score once during the final session of the evening.

But it was the play of Nicholson that got the Bobcats back into contention, as she scored a pair of goals in the opening two minutes of the second half to propel her team to the victory.

Now with two straight wins in overtime action on the heels of three straight losses, Bobcats’ head coach Brian Schult said his team stayed confident despite the lopsided halftime deficit.

“We’ve been down a couple of other times and we’ve come back, and we’ve had a couple of close games that have prepared us for this,” he said. “We got ourselves back into it slowly but surely, and we hustled all the way through the end and we finally got it.”

Warriors’ head coach Bobby Norizsan said the goals by Nicholson caught West-Oak off guard to open the second half, which marked the only poor stretch by his team all night.

“That sort of hurt us a little bit, and I think we were still thinking about that first goal and allowed them to get that second goal,” he said. “We sort of played two minutes of poor soccer. Then we snapped out of it and played fairly well the rest of the game, but it was a little bit too late then.”

Over the past week, the Warriors had played three games, all of which were decided by penalty kicks. West-Oak’s lone win in those games came on Tuesday against Rabun Co. (Ga.), while it fell to rival Walhalla last Thursday.

West-Oak couldn’t find the goal on any of its four penalty kicks, and Norizsan said the game against Walhalla may have crept into his players’ minds.

“If you’re not successful at a PK game here and there, it starts to weigh on you,” he said. “I think we had that in our mind.”

The Warriors had seized control early in the game, as senior Antoinette Angell connected for a goal just 16 minutes into the action.

Then 11 minutes later, Kalyn Stevenson found the net for a 2-0 lead that the Warriors held until the half.

But Nicholson responded with the two goals to end the half, which changed the tone of the game.

“As soon as we got that first goal, you saw the momentum shift to us and we just kept the pressure on them for the whole second half,” Schult said.

Following their win, the Bobcats will be in action again tonight at 6:30 p.m. at home against Walhalla to make up for their game that was rained out on March 7.

The Warriors will be off until next Tuesday when they host Elbert Co. (Ga.) at 5:30 p.m.

Seneca 3, West-Oak 2

SHS 0 2 0 0 2 — 3

W-O 2 0 0 0 0 — 2

First half

W — Angell

W — Stevenson

Second half

S — Nicholson

S — Nicholson (Goss)

First overtime

(none)

Second overtime

(none)

Penalty kicks

S — Goss, Pund

W — none