Mount Everett, Lenox Girls Battle to a Draw
LENOX, Mass. – After a sluggish offensive first half for both teams on Saturday night, the Lenox and Mount Everett girls soccer teams turned things up a notch.
Just not enough to generate a goal.
The Millionaires’ Ella Hall and Eagles’ Emma Goewey combined to make 10 saves as the teams settled for a 0-0 tie in a non-league battle under the lights.
Mount Everett had the better of play in the opening stages of the second half but had to fend off a furious Lenox attack in the last 10 minutes to preserve the stalemate.
“I think we had them on their heels,” Mount Everett coach Josh King said. “We really took control that first 10 minutes. We applied pressure.
“But then we got a little lazy in the middle of that half, and they started to turn it up. We were able to bend but not break, which is good. It’s just one of those things where we have to learn to keep our foot on the gas pedal as much as we can and keep the intensity going.”
Lenox generated the best pressure of the first half toward the end of the period. It culminated in a hard shot on frame from Maddie Pope deep on the right wing. Goewey was forced to make a leaping save and punch the ball over the crossbar for a corner kick in the 33rd minute.
Mount Everett earned an early corner kick to start the second half, but Hall made a stop in the 46th minute for one of her six saves on the night.
The teams then traded chances through the middle 20 minutes of the second half, but the field started to tip in favor of the Millionaires at about the 65-minute mark.
With a little more than five minutes left to play, Lenox earned back-to-back corner kicks, but the Eagles were able to weather the storm.
“I thought it was a little bit more even in the first half, and in the last 10ish minutes, we made a big push,” Lenox coach Brian Seminara said. “We just decided a little too late to try to make the push. But we definitely had some tired legs because we had the game [Friday], too, so that was hurting us.
“I think when you have some tired legs, the mind drifts a little bit, and you get sort of lackadaisical. It took a little while for the adrenaline to kick in, I think, which they were running on purely at the end.”
After a recovery day on Sunday, the Millionaires (4-6-2) are right back at it on Monday when they host Chicopee, the first of three games in five days to wrap up the regular season.
Mount Everett (9-3-2) is off until Tuesday when it hosts Hopkins Academy.
“It’s a good way to end the season, especially with the competition that we have,” King said. “We’re always in that spot where we’re on the edge. State rankings are crazy. Sometimes they make sense, sometimes they don’t. But if we can take care of the things we need to take care of and play the way I know we can play, I have no doubt we’ll be able to do some things.
“Last year, we lost 2-0 to West Boylston, and that game was a lot closer than 2-0.”