West Springfield Girls Pull Away from Mount Greylock
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. -- For 34 minutes on Friday night, the Mount Greylock girls soccer team was within a goal of one of the top programs in Western Massachusetts.
Then, things got away from the Mounties in a big way.
West Springfield scored seven goals in the last 46 minutes on John T. Allen Field to earn an 8-0 win.
The 2015 Western Mass Division 1 semi-finalists got three goals from Chelsea Hoey and a pair from Nikki Abel to improve to 3-1 this fall.
Mount Greylock slipped to 1-4 but could take some solace from the fact that it managed to keep things interesting for most of the first half.
“That’s what we have to build on, and I’ll remind them of that on Sunday when we meet,” Mount Greylock coach Tom Ostheimer said. “We’ve got to turn the page. We’re playing one of the best teams in the state, arguably, and we held our own in the first half - except for a couple of late goals.
“It was eight minutes to go [before half-time], and Tiku [Majumder], my assistant, and I were saying, we’ve got to get to half-time. We’ve just got to get it to half-time. And they got those two quick ones, and that kind of took the wind out of our sails.”
The deluge started when Hoey finished a play in the box that started with a free kick deep on the right wing. Hoey’s first goal of the game made it 2-0, West Side, with 5 minutes, 55 seconds left before half-time.
Hoey scored again just more than a minute later on a shot from the top right corner of the 18 that curled under the cross bar and over the outstretched arms of Mount Greylock senior keeper Rachel Voller.
Voller made a couple of big stops earlier in the half to help keep it close. She rotated out of the net after half-time, and sophomore Isabella Nicastro faced a barrage of shots after the break.
Nicastro ended up stopping seven shots to give the pair a combined 11 saves on the night.
No one on the Mount Greylock sideline is going to want to look too long at the scoresheet from this game, but the experience should help the Mounties going forward as they get back into Berkshire County play Monday at home against Lenox.
“You hate to give up eight goals, but they just were relentless,” Ostheimer said. “They didn’t give up, and they kept pounding it into the box. They’re strong all the way through.
“I’d prefer a 4-1 game. I knew it was going to be tough because they beat Pittsfield, 4-0, and Pittsfield’s a strong team in the county. We knew it was going to be tough. I would have liked to have had a comparable result and maybe bang one in. But we’ve got to keep plugging away.
“This is the fourth time we’ve played them, and we’ve come closer. This was the most one-sided result. I don’t think it’s a matter of us being a weaker team. I think it’s just that they’re a stronger and more complete team.”