Gorhamites Emma Forgues, Alexis Fotter and Tiril Wiig tallied two each against the visiting Maine Girls’ Academy on Saturday morning, Sept. 3. The trio lead their teammates in wringing a 9-0 result from the Lions. 

Rams’ head coach Jeanne Zarilli pointed to a number of things her girls did well in the matchup, their season-opener: “Combination play, teamwork, give-n’-gos; I thought we did that really well in the second half. Running off the ball – we’ve been working really hard on that in practice; backs coming up to run out of the back. All the stuff we’ve been working on, we started to execute today. Finishing, obviously.”

Gorham controlled the action for most of the game’s 80 minutes, keeping play in MGA’s end and severely limiting the Lions’ offensive forays. Still, it took the Rams more than seven minutes to light the lamp – Fotter’s first, a shot across from low on the left side. 

Gorham added two more in the uphill half: Forgues’s first, at 30:21, then Caitlin Chasse’s contribution on the day, at 22:55. After that, MGA settled into a stalwart defensive posture and successfully held the Rams at bay until the break.

“We’re still a work in progress,” Zarilli said, reticent – as any good coach would be – to heap excess praise on her girls so early in the season. “One of the things we struggled with last year, that we still sometimes struggle with, is, we get down and we hit the ball near-post to the goalie. So we’re working on – and we did a good job of it today – popping the ball back out to give people a good opportunity in front of the goal.”

Zarilli went on: “A couple times, we talked about, in the first half, people were dribbling too much,” she said. “And then someone steps and we end up shooting into a defender. That’s sloppy; we want to be quicker: two-touch ball, finishing. And we want to win balls in the air – pet peeve.”

Gorham went a bit berserk in the downhill half, hashing six more. Wiig initiated the battery at 31:17, redirecting a feed across from Courtney Cushing past the Lions’ keeper and into the back of their net. Ten minutes later, Forgues carried up the right side, then dished to center for Fotter to notch her second of the morning. Forgues added another – on a relaxed shot from 20 yards out – at 14:50, and Cushing scored on a similar play three minutes after that. 

At 10:49 Cushing and Wiig teamed up almost exactly as they’d earlier done, punishing home the 8-0 goal, and – finally – at 7:39, Emily Esposito capped the day’s attack by determinedly cutting through the heart of the MGA defense to earn her first point on the soccer pitch in some time – Zarilli reports Espo is returning to the team after a year’s absence.

“They’re probably not the most competitive team in the league,” Zarilli matter-of-factly said of the Lions. “But they’re more competitive than they have been in the past. [Their coach] is doing a nice job.”

Zarilli refrained from patting any of her girls individually on the head. “The thing I think is a strength of ours this year is, we have some depth,” she said. “So when I put the second group in, they’re playing at the same level the first group is playing on. So it’s hard for me to say, ‘That one player’ or ‘Those two players,’ because then the next group goes in and they’re just as effective.”

Gorham kicks off the season right, going to 1-0. Their schedule gets gradually more difficult, though: The team hosted Biddeford on Wednesday the 7th, after the American Journal’s print deadline, then traveled to South Portland – a team to watch – on Friday the 9th. They host mighty Scarborough on Wednesday the 14th.

Gorham’s Lyndsey Estes attacks the MGA net on Saturday morning.

The Rams’ Caitlin Chasse knocks a ball from the MGA corner toward the front of the net on Saturday morning.

Emma Forgues grabs a ball out of the air for Gorham.

Under heavy coverage, Courtney Cushing quickly settles a Gorham ball.