Freeport senior Julia Smith shuttled her squad past Traip Academy Friday afternoon, scoring both of the Falcons’ goals in a 2-0 shutout of the visiting Rangers. The win over Traip, now 5-5-1 and 11th in C West, bumps Freeport to 3-6-2 on the year.

“My style is definitely a possession game,” Freeport head coach Elayna Girardin said. “If you have the ball, the other team doesn’t, and it makes it harder for them to score, easier for you to score. So I stress a two-touch game with a lot of movement.

“I think soccer is a very simple sport; we tend to overcomplicate it. By keeping it just nice movement, it’s pretty and it can really work around teams and create more chances.”

The Falcons compete in B West, where they hover in 12th, just outside the postseason picture. They’ll need to make the most of their three remaining games – hosting Falmouth, hosting Poland and on the road at Waynflete – if they hope to earn a playoff berth.

“The problem the team has had,” said Girardin, “is we played Yarmouth, we had blown a 2-0 lead. We played other teams that we’ve controlled a lot, and not won because we haven’t played with heart.

“We can pass around teams all we want, but unless you want to win, you’re not going to win. That’s pretty much what they were told [at halftime]: in order for us to win this game, we need to start playing like we want to win. If not, I’m sure there’s somebody who will.

“Just knowing that I was willing to put in whoever wanted to play hard picked everyone’s game up. We haven’t had that. Usually we start playing hard when we’re down, not up. This is the first game I’ve seen them pick it up while winning.”

Their performance against Traip gives the hopeful reason to take heart. They looked tentative at times, but solid overall, on defense – and especially in net, where keeper Izzy Qualls proved her worth time and again. Qualls grabbed more than one incoming direct kick out of midair and stopped more than one hard shot to keep Freeport firmly on top. Her late-game save, a brilliant, leaping deflection to send the ball just off her fingertips and over the cage, ended her seven-save game in particularly spectacular fashion.

“We’ve been working on that all season!” Girardin said happily of Qualls’s deflection. “I was so excited to see that…Some of the goals against us this season have been that, so to see her put it into play was just great.”

“This is her first year starting, and she’s the opposite of what you’d expect. A lot of goalies are loud and commanding; she’s a sweet, quiet girl – and then you get her on the field. As the season has gone on, we’ve seen her play with more and more confidence. She’s definitely come into her own as a goalie. She’s believing she’s a varsity goalie.”

Smith’s pair of goals looked a lot alike, in fact. The first came eight minutes into the first half, and the second came in the 13th minute of the second half; both shots sailed in, just over the head of Traip keeper Morgan Reed, from near the top-left corner of the Rangers’ box.

“The first goal was very similar to the second,” Girardin said. “Smith got the ball out wide. She’s got a killer left foot, she crossed it in, and it just barely went over the goalie. That’s what she does best, and it’s been great to see her turn those into goals, versus just crosses, which is what she typically does – girls are unselfish, they like to pass.”

Reed finished with five saves, meaning she faced the same number of quality shots as Qualls, but wasn’t having quite the same day. 2-0 the final.

Freeport welcomes Falmouth on Tuesday the 14th at 3:30 p.m., after the Tri-Town Weekly’s deadline. The game will be a tough one for the Falcons, as the Yachtsmen, at 5-4-2, occupy A West’s fifth-place slot.

Freeport defender Kaitlin Johnson boots the ball ahead in her team’s 2-0 win over visiting Traip on Friday.The Falcons’ Alyssa Richardson keeps a step ahead of a Traip pursuer.Freeport’s Jill Baker shunts her body between the ball and Traip’s Izzy Mutch.Freeport middie Lindsay Cartmell shovels the ball forward.Traip’s Daria Barbour-Brown muscles into Freeport’s Addie Morang to take over control.