Gorham wallops Cheverus with six second-half goals

Once Ryan Hamblen scored the Gorham soccer team’s first goal in its road matchup at Cheverus on Tuesday afternoon, Oct. 4 – and that never happened until deep into the second half – the Rams caught fire. Kyle Patterson had their biggest day, posting a pair as the team cruised to a 6-0 W.

Gorham head coach Tim King applauded his boys’ possessing of the ball, and expressed confidence in the team’s man-in-net, Alex York. “I felt like we had the ball most of the first half, and Cheverus had a few counterattacks. But Alex is a good keeper, and when he faces shots, he’s going to make the plays.”

The first half of the game offered little in the way of noteworthy action: Gorham held the edge, possessing for much of the stretch, but the Stags did a fine job tying their guests up at midfield and repelling them when they managed to penetrate the offensive third. The game appeared fated to turn into another knotty matchup between a pair of squads who’ve become friendly rivals in recent years.

Appearances often deceive, though, and when Hamblen struck – a scrappy redirect past Cheverus keeper Harrison Bell – 12 minutes into the second half, he let the scoring genie out of the bottle. A minute and a half later, Tyler Richman posted a ball that bounced out left to Sam Burghardt, who immediately returned it across to beat Bell a second time.

“We had the ball a lot in the first half, and Cheverus did a really good job of packing back in, defensively,” said King. “They had six, eight guys, back behind the ball, and it’s really tough to break that down.”

“We didn’t change a whole lot (in the second half),” King said. “We tried to stay with our plan and stay calm because we thought we would break through. And, because the sun was in the goalie’s eyes, we were going to try to play some more balls up in the air and get some of our bigger guys crashing in there, which I didn’t think we did a very good job of in the first half. We got some scrappy goals by doing that.”

Patterson’s first goal, at 20:57 looked similar to Burghardt’s: Bell blocked a shot from the right side, but the effort threw him off his feet; meanwhile, the rebound kicked directly out to Patterson, who took a gentle touch over the top for 3-0. Eight minutes later, Richman lofted a corner into a melee at Bell’s feet, where a Stag accidentally deflected it in.

“The first goals were scrappy,” said King, “and sometimes in a game like this, where the defense is so tightly packed in, that’s what you have to do. Then, I think, Cheverus had to open up a little bit more and play more offense, and that gave us a few more opportunities.”

With 5:47 remaining, Nolan Brown, dashing up the left sideline, took a perfect touch that just angled the ball far enough ahead of him and deep enough into the Cheverus corner to set him up for a perfect cross to Ben Nelson, lingering on the Stags’ doorstep. Nelson one-timed home the 5-0 point.

It was the Rams’ first pretty notch of the day – but hey, scoring is scoring.

Finally, with just 2:41 left on the clock, Patterson earned his second, dribbling agilely through the Stags’ defense before stopping suddenly around 25 yards out and unwinding into a nice floater over Bell’s leaping hands. 6-0 the final.

“We did have some real nice goals,” said King, “especially that last one by Kyle. That was an incredible goal. We’ve got a good deep team; some of these kids don’t to play quite as much as some of the others, and when they get in there, they want to show what they can do. And there’s some talented kids.”

Gorham jumped to 9-0-1 on the result. The team is currently second in A South, behind Falmouth (8-1-1). They host Portland No. 5 Portland (6-2-1) on Thursday, Oct. 6, and welcome No. 15 Windham (1-8) on Tuesday the 11th.

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