LIVINGSTON- Mount St. Dominic had seen this first act of the show before; in fact, it was also against Livingston in what was a previous come-from-behind, eventual victory against their conference rivals.
The second act in the case of Saturday’s Essex County Tournament final saw the top-seeded Lions react with the same calm demeanor of senior star Lena Tusche on the way to what became a decisive 4-1 win over the Lancers to earn the Caldwell Catholic school’s first ECT girls soccer crown.
The undefeated Mount (20-0) trailed second-seeded and 2-time defending champion Livingston 1-0 after the Lancers’ star Dina Bojkovic scored her 30th goal of the season with 5:45 remaining in the first half.
When the close-knit Lions interacted with each other and their coaches at halftime, Tusche had a brief but powerful message for her teammates.
“I just reminded everyone that we had been in this position before and we just had to remain calm and be ready to go out in the second half and play like we’re capable of,” said Tusche, the team’s Vanderbilt-bound star who finished the ECT final with two goals and two assists. “We knew that they were going to come out hard against us, but we also knew that we could come out and play 10 times harder.
“One of our main goals at the beginning of the year was to win the Essex County Tournament, and we were determined to achieve that victory today no matter how the game started out.”
Tusche, who had a shot strike the crossbar just 1:35 into the second half, found the back of the net with another blast five minutes later to tie the match, 1-1, before her senior teammate and best friend, Princeton commit Gianna Camporeale broke the game open 10 minutes later, striking for two goals in the span of just 2:41 to make it 3-1 Lions with 20:00 remaining.
Tusche converted a penalty kick to close out the scoring and the Mount had achieved what it had sought to do for a very long time, which is to win the biggest prize pursued by its countywide brethren, and an achievement already earned eight times by the Lancers in the 42 years of the ECT.
“Livingston is a fantastic team, their coach Brian Carr is great, and we’ve been chasing them for years,” said Mount head coach Angelo Del Vecchio. “We’ve been striving for this for a long time.
“Every Mount player is a brick in a building we’ve been erecting for years. This championship is not just for these girls, but it’s for all the Mount players and coaches of the past and present, including all the girls who have played for me during my nine years as head coach.
“This was simply another challenge that this team has faced and conquered in the end. I’ve always told them that they’re going to face adversity at times, and to embrace it because I know what we’re capable of and that when we play our game like we did in the second half we’re really hard to beat.”
It’s a very young Mount team with only six seniors on the 22-member roster in the ECT championship program. Two of them, Tusche and Camporeale, have made sure to be there more often than not as they combined to score 12 of their team’s 17 goals in the 2025 ECT and have now combined for 53 goals and 38 assists on the season.
