Souhegan girls soccer makes goal stand in win over Hollis Brookline

AMHERST – Peter Clarke thought that Friday’s season-opener would be a good way to measure his Hollis Brookline High School girls soccer team.

The Cavaliers were taking on defending champion Souhegan in HB’s first game in Division II after playing up a division the last two years, and despite the 1-0 loss, Clarke was encouraged by what he saw.

“We came out rattled and definitely nervous,” he said. “We came out here to measure ourselves against the state champions. We found them, and in the second half, we measured well. I am absolutely delighted the way we carried the second half pace.”

Souhegan coach Dwayne Andreasen couldn’t say the same about his team.

“We’re young with a lot new kids,” he said. “We knew we were going to have to try to figure stuff out. We knew we’d struggle scoring until we find that mix. What I didn’t anticipate is that we let them control the play. We didn’t step to the ball when we should have. What we did was we reacted and played out of control.”

Souhegan got the game’s only goal off a corner kick in the 32^nd minute. Peyton Kent took the kick and sent it right to Korina Hahn at the near post. Hahn knocked the ball down from her right to her left, rolled to that side as the HB defense went the other way, and buried the ball into the open net to give the Sabers a 1-0 lead.

The Sabers made that goal stand the rest of the way, even though the Cavs had several scoring opportunities throughout the second half.

Souhegan almost made it a two-goal lead early in the second, when a bad clear by HB gave the Sabers a shot in close. But the ball hit the cross bar and caromed out far enough to send the Cavs on a break.

At the other end, Kashka Gammon’s crossing pass for Lindsey Vazquez was too far for Vazquez to get to, and the Cavs missed on another opportunity a few minutes later.

Midway through the second, Vazquez had another chance, but her shot from right to left was wide.

“We came out fired up at the beginning (of the second half) with a couple of quick attacks and we just missed by inches on that last connection,” Clarke said. “The creative risks that were taken by the girls were perfect, and those are the ones that we’ll connect. I came out of this game seeing more than I thought.”

The good news for Andreasen is he now knows exactly what his team needs to do to get better.

“We’ve got to get our possession down and we’ve got to get our runs going,” he said. “We didn’t bring our ‘A’ game (Friday). Our goal was that we wanted to start off on the right foot. We got plenty of information to work with going forward.”

The Sabers will have time to get ready for the next one, as they’ll return to the field Aug. 30 at Pembroke. HB hosts Milford on Tuesday.