No longer fit to be tied, Raiders sweep season series from Blue Devils with Quintero’s late goal

QUINCY — The thought of playing to another draw became increasingly aggravating.

“We just knew we couldn’t tie again, not after tying in each of our past three games,” said Grace Bertram, a junior defender on the Quincy Notre Dame girls soccer team. “We just couldn’t.”

Yet, through 73 minutes of Monday night’s crosstown showdown with Quincy High School at Flinn Stadium, a scoreless draw looked like it might be reality. 

“I don’t see a tie as a win in any way,” QND junior forward Lia Quintero said. “I didn’t want to tie with them.”

She took it upon herself to make sure it didn’t happen.

Chasing down a feed toward the far post from freshman midfielder Sage Stratton, Quintero got behind the QHS defense and one-timed a left-footed volley past Blue Devils goalkeeper Taylor Fohey with 6:06 to play in regulation for the only goal in a 1-0 victory.

“I knew I was there in time,” Quintero said. “I was a little worried I was offsides, but it didn’t end up being that way. So it worked out well.”

It cemented a sweep of the season series for the Raiders for the first time since 2019.

QND (4-0-3) opened the season with a 3-2 victory over QHS when Quintero scored the winning goal with a little less than seven minutes remaining in the second half. It jumpstarted a three-game win streak before the Raiders hit a wall with three consecutive ties, two of which were scoreless draws.

“We didn’t let those ties stop us,” QND junior defender Eva Dickerman said. “We keep trying and we keep working hard.”

The Blue Devils made the Raiders work incredibly hard to keep the game tied for as long as it was.

QHS (4-3) had three high-quality scoring chances narrowly miss, none closer than Taylor Routh’s shot with roughly 12 minutes remaining in the first half that QND goalkeeper Addison Van Hecke parried off the crossbar and caught the rebound.

Bri Lannerd later hit the crossbar with a blast, and Rian Moore lifted a shot from the right wing that sailed over the crossbar and landed on the back of the net. It was all part of a constant Blue Devils attack that kept possession in their attacking half of the field a majority of the second half.

“I kept looking down at our coaches and asking, ‘Do we need to tweak anything?’” QHS coach Travis Dinkheller said. “But when you have possession and you’re controlling the flow of play, you want to stick with it. We talked about doing a few tweaks here or there, but we were getting opportunities. We were getting the ball in the box, but we weren’t getting on the end of them.

“Some of that is they weren’t always the best service, but the anticipation needs to be better. We need to get hungrier in the box.”

The Raiders’ ability to clear the box helped, too.

“We know we just have to step,” Bertram said. “If we don’t step, they score. They have some feet. They can really kick from far out. We know that from past years. So you just have to step and hope for the best.”

Now that the string of ties is broken, the Raiders believe the best is yet to come.

“We’ve had some problems the last three games not being able to figure out how to play together,” Bertram said. “To have this one, it definitely gets us prepared to push forward.”