Swampscott girls soccer blanks St. Mary’s

LYNN – Swampscott invaded Manning Field Saturday evening for a soccer showdown with St Mary’s. The Big Blue girls team won 2-0.Click here to see a photo gallery from the game.Coach Fred Day brought his second-place Big Blue (12-4 NEC South) looking to stay strong after falling 4-0 to Danvers and then rebounding to defeat Winthrop. The Spartans, led by coach Jim Foley, were coming off a loss to Catholic Central Large League leader Cardinal Spellman.The Spartan defenders in front of keeper Megan Brickley kept the high-flying Big Blue in check for most of the game. Bridget Donovan, Briana Marotta and Mikaela Donovan played in front of sweeper Stephanie Mowry.At the other end of the field, Big Blue keeper Tara Nimkar had given up under one goal per game and had 10 shutouts this year.Like St Mary’s, Swampscott has four excellent deep defenders to keep the other teams’ strikers away from Nimkar. Megan Dawley, Monique Bleau and co-captain Sarah Burnham covered the fleet-footed strikers from St Mary’s. Sweeper Lisa Gambale takes care of any problems that do get close to the keeper.The first 25 minutes were what you would expect from two excellent teams. The ball went up and down the field with excellent passing and excellent defending. In the 26th minute, Big Blue midfielder Erin Langan put a through ball to the left to a streaking senior striker, Marissa Gambale, who picked up the pass behind the wing defender, cut into the area and had the keeper at her mercy. She made no mistake and beat Brickley to the right post. Swampscott jumped out to a 1-0 lead. The first half ended without any further scoring.One adjustment made by Day was to add a fourth defender to the Big Blue backfield. The fourth defender was enough to clog up the middle. The other move he made was to use co-captain Skylar Sabbag as a shadow to cover St. Mary’s all-everything midfielder, Amanda Webster. Except for a dead ball shot from twenty-five yards out that hit the crossbar, Sabbag managed to keep Webster quiet in the game.The play of the game came eight minutes into the second half. Big Blue co-captain Marissa Gambale picked up the ball 60 yards from the goal, faked out the Spartan wing midfielder, turned on the jets and went down the right wing. With an extra burst of speed, she went around the wing defender and only had the sweeper between her and the keeper. She beat the sweeper to the short side, froze the keeper and blasted a low shot to the right corner. This scintillating goal made the score 2-0, Swampscott. That play took some of the steam out of the Spartans and energized the Big Blue.Swampscott dropped more defenders into the game and held off any further scoring attacks by the Spartans. The final score was Swampscott 2, St Mary’s 0.Day was upbeat with the play of his team. He said, “This is one that we needed. We have one game left with Marblehead and that is usually a war. Then we will get ready for the states; that doesn’t start until Nov 8.”Foley the Spartans coach was not happy. The Spartans are not used to losing two in a row. They will have their chance to get back on the winning track next Wednesday, when they play host to Archbishop Williams.