Raiders awake late

Rock Bridge struck first, but Quincy Notre Dame scored last.

The Raiders reeled off the last three goals to defeat the Bruins 3-1 on Tuesday at Cosmopolitan Park.

Sara Liesen’s goal in the 70th minute gave the Raiders a 2-1 edge and her assist to a sprinting Laura Wittland in injury time provided the final margin.

“I just turned and I saw that I had no place to go, so I figured I could shoot it because we needed to test out the goalie,” Liesen said. “We didn’t really get many shots in the first half.”

Quincy Notre Dame’s offense came to life in the 40th minute when Miki Peters steered a corner kick past goalie Emily Schuenemeyer.

“The first half we didn’t come to play,” Raiders coach Mark Longo said. “We got lucky scoring on that corner kick play; you don’t score many coming directly from the corner. In the second half, I thought we had with a lot more intensity and did a better job of attacking the goal.”

Quincy Notre Dame’s wakeup call proved to be the Bruins’ undoing.

Rock Bridge got off to a fast start in the fifth minute when Karissa Nedoma took a pass from Sophia Alioto and ran over sprawling goalie Kaileen Gerding for the score, but the Bruins (9-3-1) could not keep their momentum.

“For as hard as we played in the first half to give up a goal in the 40th minute of the first half, that took some fire out,” Bruins coach Marc VanDover said.

In the second half, Bruins goalie Emily Roark made several spectacular saves in relief of Schuenemeyer. Despite the diving saves on close-range shots, Roark was unable to contain the steady stream of offense from Quincy Notre Dame (10-2-2).

“We had some defensive lapses and I was able to stop most of them,” Roark said. “When they get through that many times, you can’t get all of them.”