English girls finish up with win over Classical 1-0

LYNN – In a poignant evening, the Lynn English girls soccer team concluded its season with a 1-0 win over Classical at Manning Field on Thursday.Click here for a photo gallery.Before the game, Classical coach Marcy Durgin was honored by her players because she is leaving coaching to be married in December and move to Chicago.”A Durgin has coached or taught every year since the mid- ’50s,” Durgin said. “This now comes to an end.”Durgin was the assistant coach for eight years and the head coach of the Rams for four years.The lone player honored was the only senior on the Rams team, Kelly Deveney, who had moved with her family last spring to Arkansas because her father’s company had made the move.Deveney wanted to finish her high school career with the classmates with whom she grew up. She returned in September to live with her aunt and uncle and is finishing her high school career as a Ram. She is one of the captains of the soccer team and is also a captain of the Classical girls ice hockey team.Her parents flew up from Arkansas to see her last game as the Classical sweeper. She will stay in Lynn until she graduates next June.The first half was a combination of great goaltending by both keepers, Brittany Goulet from English and Mackenzie Coppinger from Classical. Both teams also have excellent sweepers who control the play in front of the net. Junior Shawna Henry from English is the textbook sweeper, covering everything from sideline to sideline, while Classical’s Deveney stays more to the middle of the area.During the first half, neither team had control of the midfield. As a result the ball kept moving from one end to the other. The half ended with no score. The second half had just started when English struck for the only goal of the game. Shannon Kidney carried the ball across midfield, and when she was in front of the English bench, she put a 35-yard through ball to the left wing, where Megan Forti picked up the pass behind the Ram right defender and went in alone on Coppinger, the Ram keeper.As Coppinger came off the line to cut down the angle, Forti pulled the trigger on the shot and beat Coppinger to the top left corner of the net. It was only fitting that Forti scored the last and winning goal of her career at English. She sat out all of her junior year after knee surgery. She spent her entire junior year as scorekeeper and unofficial assistant coach to head coach Ed McNeil.English senior keeper Goulet will be missed next year as she picked up her sixth shutout of the year and the 21st of her varsity career.This was the final game of the season for both Classical and English.