HATFIELD — The nerves showed a little bit for No. 4 Smith Academy at the very beginning of its Western Mass. Class E quarterfinal game against No. 5 Pioneer on Wednesday.
The visiting Panthers controlled the play for the first five minutes or so, prompting Smith Academy head coach David Zononi to call out for his team to get moving and not stay flat-footed. After shaking off the rust, the Falcons soared to an 8-0 victory, sending them to the semifinals against No. 1 Granby. That semifinal match will be in Granby at 11 a.m. on Saturday.
“I think everyone kind of shut off the nerves once we stepped on the field,” Smith Academy sophomore Caitlin Graves said. “We started playing together and we’re just having fun and that kind of helps with the nerves.”
Five different players found the score sheet for the Falcons, but nobody was more electric than Graves, who notched four goals and one assist for her team; two of those goals came as she was falling to the ground. While the pancakes she had for breakfast may have helped give her an edge on Wednesday, Graves also said that her teammates set her up perfectly all game long.
“I thought the passes today were really great. They were just perfect height, perfect length,” Graves said. “It put more pressure on me because I didn’t want to mess it up.”
Pioneer came out firing on all cylinders and hit a post early, but couldn’t keep the offensive pressure going. Their bad luck continued throughout the game – several injuries shortened an already tight bench and made it more difficult for the Panthers to play catch-up as the gap widened.
“There are times that the bear bites you, and today we got bit,” Pioneer head coach Larry Poirier said. “We did pretty well in the first 10 or 15 minutes. It was pretty much an even game and both teams hit a post in that first 10 minutes. One goal to start can make a big difference in any game.”
Goalie Shaelyn Mullen did her best to keep the visitors team in the game, making nine saves in the defeat, but Smith Academy’s firepower was unstoppable. Besides Graves’ impressive performance, Meghan Bell had a three-point day with two goals and an assist, as did Anna Scagel with two helpers and a goal. Emma Moynihan (1G) and Keene Jeffress (2A) were also instrumental in the Falcons’ victory.
The explosion of goals was a surprise to Zononi, who knew that the Panthers would be a tough matchup. He said he was proud of what his team was able to accomplish against a physical Pioneer squad.
“We did watch a lot of tape on them thanks to modern technology. We knew they were physical, we were going to have to bring it to them,” Zononi said. “Didn’t know it was gonna be quite like this, but yeah, we’re happy with it.”
Smith Academy struck first when Bell tallied a goal in the 14th minute of the first half. Just shy of 10 minutes later, she struck again on a wide-open breakaway shot to double the lead, and Graves notched her third of the game in the final minute of the half to give the home team a 4-0 lead heading into the break.
The floodgates opened in the second half when Scagel scored in the 43rd minute and Graves notched her second about 30 seconds later. Graves scored again in the 46th minute to earn the hat trick and make it 6-0, and Moynihan and Graves scored another set of back-to-back goals in the 70th minute to make it 8-0.
Bell was hopeful that the shutout win would intimidate their next opponent, and also reflected post-game on how far the young squad had come in such a short time.
“We do have such a young team and it was just going to be a build-up year, but these younger kids came out really hard,” Bell said. “This is really what we’ve worked for all year and we kept up our enthusi asm and intensity and really played our hardest.”