Danvers girls soccer blanks Fenwick, reaches D2 North finals

LYNN – Two weeks ago, the Danvers High girls soccer team played Bishop Fenwick in a nonleague game to get both teams ready for the tourney. They met Thursday night at Manning Field in the Division 2 North semifinals and it was a contest for the first 20 minutes before Danvers pulled away to a 6-0 victory to reach the North final.Click here for a photo gallery.”Danvers is a great team,” Fenwick coach Karen Guillemette said. “They were the better team tonight, that’s for sure. We played hard. We played tough. We did the best we could. We just came up short.”Top-seeded Danvers is now 18-0-3. The Falcons have not allowed a goal in the tournament thus far, shutting out No. 16 Gloucester 4-0 in the first round and No. 8 Swampscott 6-0 in the quarterfinals.No. 13 Fenwick finished 9-5-7 after upsetting No. 4 North Reading 3-2 on penalty kicks in the first round and shutting out Saugus 3-0 in the quarterfinals.Danvers will play Wayland (which defeated Wakefield 1-0 on penalty kicks in the first game of the day at Manning Field yesterday) in the North final, scheduled for Saturday at Manning Field at 3:30 p.m.The first 20 minutes were what you would expect from two highly-skilled, well-coached teams. The big difference was Danvers’ ability to completely shut down Fenwick’s big gun, Kristin Verrette, while Fenwick had no answer for the dynamic duo from Danvers, strikers Brittany Russo and Corey Persson. They roamed the field without tight marking and the final score proved that.Danvers opened the scoring in the 21st minute, when Persson burst up the middle through the arc and took a pass from Joanna Zecha and blasted the ball past keeper Jill Dean to make the score 1-0, Falcons.Eight minutes later, Persson struck again on a pass from Allie Lea. She picked up the ball in stride and chipped it over the keeper’s head. This pushed the score to 2-0, Danvers. The half ended with Danvers having two more excellent chances to score.In the first seven minutes of the second half, Danvers blitzed the Crusaders for three more goals. In the 42nd minute, Russo took a pass from Persson outside the area, broke between two defenders and put a low hard shot past the keeper to the left corner that put Danvers ahead 3-0. Two minutes later, Persson scored her second hat trick in two games. She took a pass, cutting from right to left, went down the left side of the area and put a left-footed rocket into the low right corner.Three minutes later, in the 47th minute, Russo put the finish to the Fenwick defense. She intercepted a clearing pass, broke in alone on the keeper and scored against her to the short side. This made the score 5-0, Danvers.The Danvers defense, led by Kellie Macdonald, was so overpowering that Falcon keeper Allison Tivnan made her first save in the 56th minute. Both coaches emptied their benches to give the substitutes some valuable playing time. The final score was Danvers 6, Fenwick 0.