Girls Soccer: Edison shuts out Dunellen in GMCT preliminary round

EDISON – With its top goal scorer sitting on the bench for almost half the game, the Edison High School girls soccer team had no trouble moving on to the next round of the Greater Middlesex County Tournament on Thursday evening.

With senior Felicia Forsythe and her 37 goals out of the game due to two yellow cards, senior Lauren Cassella scored three goals as the 10th-seeded Eagles went on to rout 20th-seeded Dunellen 6-0.

The Eagles (13-5) will face fourth-seeded Piscataway in the first round on Saturday.

“I thought we kept working through the whole game,” Cassella said. “It was good that we continued to fight even though the odds were against us a little bit.”

With Forsythe dispatched to the sidelines due to her first yellow card, Cassella received a long pass behind Dunellen’s defensive line and scored on a breakaway to give the Eagles a 1-0 lead seven minutes into the game.

The Eagles were able to take a 3-0 lead by the end of the first half, but Forsythe received her second yellow card and was disqualified from the match just over two minutes into the second half.

Even with the three-goal lead, the loss of their top goal scorer was a gut punch for the Eagles. Instead of folding, Cassella scored two more times while Deana Maffucci scored once as Edison cruised in the second half.

“Instead of at the beginning of the season when we had the older girls and the younger girls in two distinct camps, we’ve come together as one solid team,” Edison coach Christopher McKnight said. “We have pieces we can plug in more or less anymore and really not skip a beat. Some of the freshmen have stepped up which has made it easier to take someone out like Felicia and not have to worry too much about the impact.”

Edison will play Piscataway, a team they lost 4-1 to on Oct. 5., on Saturday. The game was closely contested until late in the second half when Piscataway’s speed got the best of the Eagles.

Forsythe and her 93 career goals will be available to play on Saturday despite the two yellow cards.

“We’re expecting them to have tremendous speed, that was their biggest asset,” McKnight said. “We expect them to run, run, run all day, that’s what they did to eventually tire us out, but we’ve grown as a team, and we’re hoping for a different outcome this time around.”

Staff Writer Daniel LoGiudice can be reached at dlogiudice@gannettnj.com. Follow him on Twitter @danny_logiudice