Freshman Brook Milheiser's two goals rally North Babylon girls soccer to win over Northport

Brook Milheiser struggled to put the moment into words. And that’s understandable as it’s not often that a freshman scores the tying and winning goals to complete a player-down, two-goal comeback in a varsity contest.

Milheiser's goals lifted  North Babylon to a 4-3 win over  host Northport in Suffolk League IV girls soccer on Thursday. After the final whistle, the North Babylon players dogpiled on top of the freshman and when they emerged, Milheiser was on the shoulders of two of her teammates.

“It was intense, I don’t even know,” a still-shocked Milheiser said. “I was just happy. I felt like I did good.”

Good would be quite the undersell.

Milheiser scored the tying goal with 4:43 left in the second half after fielding a pass from Monica Clavijo, taking a touch and perfectly placing a left-footed shot in the top of the net. Exactly two minutes later, Milheiser scored the winner in a scrum in front of the net off an assist from Katelyn Nunziato following a long ball from Jenna Biondo with 2:43 left.

All of this occurred with North Babylon  down a player for the final 16:06 after a North Babylon player received two yellow cards. North Babylon trailed 3-1 with 16:06 left.

“Down a man and to score three goals like that, it shows me what I think we know and it’s that we have a special group,” coach Steve Corrado said. “Our kids work their butts off every day, they want to succeed and they are really coming together.”

Biondo scored less than two minutes after North Babylon started playing a man down. She flicked in a goal off a ball played in by Avery Halleran with 14:09 left and instead of a long celebration, she signaled to her teammates to continue playing.

“We had to keep pushing,” said Biondo, who leads Long Island with 10 goals. “It didn’t matter what the score was. There was still time in the game, so we couldn’t give up then. We just had to keep moving forward and we got the outcome we wanted.”

Sammy DeNisco, Elly Arabadjief and Riley Cash each scored for Northport (2-2, 1-1). Morgan Shirley had two assists. Melania Turano scored the first goal for North Babylon (4-0-1, 3-0).

Corrado was proud of Milheiser for her late goals, and loved how the team celebrated its freshman hero.

“We know she has tremendous ability, we know she can play,” Corrado said. “We had her up here last year as an eighth grader, unfortunately, she got hurt. But to see her score the goals is awesome. A great moment for her and she deserves to be carried off the field after those two goals.”

Corrado also believes Thursday’s victory confirms what he’s always known about his team.

“Being a man down is huge because it tells you a lot about the character of your team and we have to keep working hard to get better,” he said. “And this just shows us there are certain heights we can climb to that if they doubted it before, we can explain to them, ‘We believe in you’ and maybe they’ll believe in themselves as well.”