Girls soccer: Banner night for Parker, Sens

EASTHAMPTON — For 40 minutes, Mahar Regional School dominated play but had no goals to show for its efforts.

That didn’t sit well with Delaney Parker.

The junior forward needed just over seven minutes of the second half to make sure her Senators weren’t going to be sharing a league title with anyone else this season.

Parker scored two goals early in the second half, and Mahar captured the outright Pioneer League North Division championship with a 2-0 victory over Easthampton in girls soccer action at Sawyer Field on the campus of Williston-Northampton School.

“I thought we just needed to concentrate on finishing,” Mahar head coach Chad Softic said of the halftime discussion. “There were too many times we were just shooting to shoot. If we keep pressing, we’ll get our goals. When Delaney got that first goal, we were able to calm down a little bit and stop pressing so much.”

Indeed, the Senators (14-1-2, 10-0-2 Pioneer North) had the ball in the Easthampton defensive third for the majority of the first half. But Eagles goalkeeper Abby Coleman stopped all six shots on frame in the opening 40 minutes, and the teams went into halftime scoreless.

Needing a point to secure the outright league title, the Sens didn’t relent offensively after intermission. Parker struck for the all-important opening tally, when she lifted a left-footed shot from just outside the 18-yard box to the far post. Coleman tracked the ball and managed to get a piece of it despite the ball being over her head, but it ricocheted off the inside of the post and rolled into the back of the net to stake the visitors to a 1-0 lead just 2:47 into the second half.

With Easthampton (8-7-3, 5-4-3) reeling, Parker & Co. finished the job just over four minutes later when she tacked on some insurance. This time the play was started by eighth-grader Carra Fitzgerald, who slid a nifty pass to a nearby Parker just outside the 18. The junior sniffed the goal out again, burying another left-footed shot past a diving Coleman into the corner to make it a 2-0 game just 7:13 removed from halftime.

Easthampton looked to pack it in defensively and counterattack, although those chances proved few and far between. Mahar dominated in the midfield, with the likes of Natalie Belloli, Fitzgerald and Sienna Moore quickly snuffing out Easthampton possession. The Senators won the ball back and got it on Parker’s foot in space throughout the 80 minutes, and she danced around in the Eagles’ aggressive defense for most of the night, ultimately cashing in with the pair of tallies in the second stanza.

“That’s the story of our season, really. Our midfield has just been rock solid all year,” Softic said. “We can interchange a bunch of girls. And that’s something we haven’t had here at Mahar. We’ve always had strikers and fullbacks. But now we’ve got mids who can really do the job.”

Senators goalkeeper Maddie Lloyd made three saves to pick up the shutout, as the visitors finished the Pioneer North slate without a loss. It was the program’s sixth league crown in the past seven years, and second in three years since moving up from the Franklin County League. All that despite graduating a huge senior class that had been with the program for the long haul.

“It was like the Cleveland Indians in (the movie) ‘Major League,’” began Softic of his 2019 club. “I first saw them all together before the season after losing 15 seniors and I was like, ‘Who the hell are these guys?’ But they’ve just been awesome. They’re a fun group. Zero maintenance. Just come out, work hard every day and play well. It’s been a lot of fun.”

The Senators are hoping to peak at the right time, as the regular season comes to a close on Wednesday with a difficult road trip to the Berkshires to play Mount Greylock in an independent game. The WMass Division 3 seeds will be released on Friday, and Softic hopes the lessons the program learned from a poor final few weeks of 2018, when the team lost in the opening round of the tournament after letting a league title slip away, will pay dividends with this year’s young bunch.

“Last season left a sour taste in our mouths,” he began. “We don’t want that to happen again. Most of these kids are new, but we’ve still made a point of finishing the season strong, powering through all the way and we want to do some damage here.”

Mahar 2, Easthampton 0

Goals: (M) Parker 2.

Assists: (M) Fitzgerald.

Saves: (M) Lloyd 3. (E) Coleman 11.