Mineola Girls Soccer Wins Fourth Annual Think Pink Game

For one night the members of the Mineola girls varsity soccer team traded in their colors of red, black and white for a hue that was a bit more important: pink.

October is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month and the Lady Mustangs soccer team showed their full support by wearing the new warm-up jerseys before Friday night’s soccer game against Great Neck North at Michael Tully Park.

This is the fourth annual “Think Pink” game for Mineola, with proceeds raised through the sale of t-shirts throughout the season going to the Susan G. Komen For The Cure Foundation.

“It’s our fourth year doing the ‘Think Pink’ game and this is something the girls look forward to all season,” Mineola head coach Katherine Bennett said. “Each year we have raised almost $1,000 for the foundation and we hope to do so again this year.”

Next Sunday the whole team will participate in the 2012 Making Strides Against Breast Cancer Walk at Jones Beach starting at 8 a.m.

As for the game itself, Mineola netted two late goals from Rebecca Chiu and Nina Ribeiro for the 2-0 victory to keep their record unblemished in Conference A-4.

Great Neck North, who had already lost to Mineola 6-1 earlier in the season, did not make things easy, playing aggressive around the ball and giving Mineola goalie Samanth Venus a good workout.

“We knew coming in that they were an aggressive team and we couldn't take them for granted,” Bennett said. “They did an excellent job of face guarding our leading scorer, Nicole (Forte) and pretty much took her out of the game.”

Junior forward, Ribeiro stepped up along with sophomore Catie Cunningham to provide the offensive spark Mineola needed. Ribeiro scored on a shot with 14:44 left in the game on an assist from Cunningham to give Mineola its first goal. Chiu put the punctuation mark on the game with a direct shot with 5 minutes left.

“We had opportunities to score early on but couldn't finish the ball. Credit their goalie,” said Bennett. “She had 19 saves in the game.”

Mineola is now 7-0 in conference and will play at Carle Place on Tuesday at 4:15 p.m.

Great Neck North is 0-4 in conference and will play at Lawrence on Tuesday at 4:30 p.m.