OLD ORCHARD BEACH — It wasn’t the way to end the regular season, but it didn’t stand in the way of the accomplishment of the Old Orchard Beach girls soccer team.
The Class C Seagulls, who lost a 3-2 overtime thriller to Class B Freeport on Monday night at Joe Regina Field, are having the best season of their young history. Old Orchard Beach will enter the Western Class C playoffs with a 9-5 record, and will enter the playoffs as a No. 7 seed, hosting No. 10 Sacopee Valley (5-8-1) later this week.
The Seagulls have now reached the playoffs twice in their three year-history as a varsity program. Even youth isn’t standing in the way of their accomplishments. Not a single senior is listed on the Old Orchard Beach roster.
“We’ve got a big (junior) group that’s come through, and that’s got some of the younger groups more enthusiastic,” Old Orchard Beach head coach Heath Floyd said. “We’ve got the programs now, kindergarten and first grade, where we run clinics now with the older kids coming down. It’s a great group of girls. They’re all tight knit, they all like each other, they know each other. We’re starting three freshmen and eight juniors. They all keep saying next year, but we’re pretty good right now.”
With that said, there are plenty of players that have some playoff experience from last season.
“We don’t have that senior leadership,” Floyd said. “But we’ve got kids that played on varsity. We have some of that experience, we just don’t have a senior leader.”
Old Orchard Beach defeated Sacopee Valley in a 5-0 contest in the regular season opener on Sept. 2. But the Hawks got revenge in the second contest on Sept. 15, beating the Seagulls 1-0.
The Seagulls had some early struggles, but Floyd made some changes on the field, and the results have showed. Old Orchard Beach has scored 41 goals on the season, an average of three goals per game.
“We had a diamond in the middle, and I changed that to a flat across the middle,” Floyd said. “I took our best player, Anna Foss, and moved her from sweeper into the middle with Olivia Dubois. That really seemed to help our two strikers, Abby (Dubois) and Amy (Twohig) out a lot, they’ve got 14 and nine goals, respectively.”
The Seagulls took the lead on the Falcons on Monday night, as Abigail Dubois scored the first goal of the game seven minutes into the contest for the 1-0 lead.
The Falcons (7-7) answered a mere two minutes later, when Jocelyn Davee knocked a shot into the net from 20 yards out to tie the game at 1-1.
The Seagulls got the last shot of the half, as Twohig was awarded a direct shot on net with 41 seconds left to play. Twohig kicked it over the Freeport defenders and goalie Abby Roney to give Old Orchard Beach a 2-1 lead heading into halftime.
The Seagulls had multiple opportunities to score in the second half, including a penalty kick by Twohig that clanked off the top crossbar, but couldn’t score. It came back to bite them. With only five minutes to play and their season on the line, Davee, close to the Seagulls net, kicked the ball, where it deflected off an Old Orchard Beach player and into the net to tie the game at 2-2, forcing the game into overtime.
With momentum on their side, the Falcons closed the contest out with Ashley Richardson sneaking the ball past Seagulls goalie Jaclyn MacDonald, who in an aggressive move, charged at Richardson and the ball, to win the game.
More impressive was the fact the Falcons won with only 10 players on the field, as a Freeport player was tagged with a red card earlier in the contest.
“We missed three or four good opportunities, and against teams like that, you can’t miss those shots,” Floyd said.
The win was the biggest of the season for Freeport. A loss would have knocked the Falcons out of the Western Class B playoffs, but with the win, Freeport, who has a long history of losing, will enter as a No. 7 seed later this week.
“Freeport hasn’t made the playoffs in a long time,” head coach Elayna Zachko-Girardin said. “Nor have they really been in that place where it’s been a possibility. For the girls to be able to play hard and want it is great. When you’re a team that doesn’t have the tradition of winning, it’s difficult to (get through to the team) that they can win. We did that tonight. There was all sorts of things they had to overcome, a red card, and they did that, and they never gave up.”
For the Seagulls, it’s now a matter of having three days of practice to prepare for Sacopee Valley.
“They’re disappointed losing tonight,” Floyd said. “I’m giving them tonight, but I told them to keep their head on straight. We’ve got three days of good solid practice to just play hard and remain focused. We’re in the dance, and that’s all you try to do all year is get in the playoffs. We’re there, now it’s the last time I say, don’t worry about losing. We have a little playoff experience, and it would be great to reward the town with a home playoff game. It’s something they’ve never seen.”
— Contact Dave Dyer at 282-1535 ext. 318 or follow on Twitter @Dave_Dyer.
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