Justine Appolonia provides finishing kick for No. 3-ranked Yough girls soccer

By: HSSN Staff
Tuesday, September 18, 2018 | 6:24 PM

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No matter the sport, there’s one thing top athletes know how to do better than most — finish.

Yough standout soccer player Justine Appolonia is one of those players who has the innate ability to finish. And when she’s driving hard toward an opposing goalkeeper and going in for a score, there’s not much the keeper can do but wait and see.

“In all my years of coaching, she just has a knack of being able to finish,” said Yough coach Dann Appolonia, who is in his seventh season coaching the Cougars. “Any coach will tell you that they’re looking for players to be that last person to put the ball into the net.”

Appolonia might sound a little biased being that Justine is his daughter, but stats back up the coach’s praise.

Last week, Justine had a week players dream about. She found the back of the net eight times in Yough’s two games. Justine nearly pulled off a double hat trick performance when she scored five goals in a 6-2 Section 3-AA win over South Allegheny and added three more goals in a 10-0 nonsection win over Charleroi.

“Every time I have the ball on my foot, I look up to see if I should dribble, try and beat five players or drop,” said Justine, a junior attacking midfielder. “I don’t even think; I just do it.”

Most everything Appolonia does on the soccer pitch is muscle memory because she’s been playing since age 4. Her father introduced Justine and her three sisters to the sport. Justine’s oldest sister is the starting goalkeeper at Pitt-Johnstown, her second oldest sister Corynn played for the Cougars before deciding to head to Pitt and concentrate on academics and twin sister, Gianna, plays on the back end as a defender.

“I think it helps when you have the older siblings playing,” Dann said. “When she was growing up and going through the youth programs, she was a ball girl when my older girls were playing. There’s no question that having older sisters certainly helped her grow as a player.”

Justine agreed a little bit of sibling rivalry in the back yard helped her elevate her game.

“As kids growing up and playing around, nobody wants to lose to their siblings,” Appolonia said. “All my sisters have encouraged me and kept me going through it.”

Because she’s been around the game of soccer from such an early age, all she knows how to do is close. She began the season with 54 career goals and currently leads third-ranked Yough (3-1, 2-1) in goals (9) and assists (5).

“Honestly, I think its just my determination,” Justine said. “I’m more competitive than everyone else. I can’t even describe how bad I want to score because I want to win.”

That’s why playing the attacking midfielder position is the ideal spot. It gives her the opportunity to either drive forward, beat a few defenders and challenge the keeper or set up one of her teammates with a slick pass.

“To me, it’s about trying to get a goal from someone on the team and not necessarily about me getting one,” Justine said.

Justine added that she feels the pressure to perform this season. After losing just one senior starter from a team that earned a No. 4 seed in the Class AA playoffs only to fall to eventual runner-up Freedom, 3-0, in the semifinals, Yough is again loaded with talent. It’s not championship game or bust for this team, but it’s not far off.

“I feel like this year there’s a lot more pressure on me now that the standard is high,” Justine said. “I know that we can make it as far as we did last year and maybe further. We take it game by game and, as a junior, I also know that I have another year to make my dreams this year.”

William Whalen is a freelance writer.

Tags: Yough