LYNN — After a tough loss to St. Mary’s in the Lynn City Tournament championship game, Classical girls soccer coach Mark Ierardi was hoping to see his team bounce back with a win Monday night against Saugus.
The Rams, in their first Northeastern Conference game of the season, ran into a Sachems team that had other plans. A relentless attack on offense led Saugus to a 3-0 win over Classical at Manning Field.
Senior forward Alli Kotkowski scored a pair of goals to lead the way for the Sachems. Rachel Nazzaro, a senior midfielder, scored the third Saugus goal of the night.
Classical goaltender Carly Mendonca had her work cut out for her in the early goings of the contest. The junior netminder was tested early and often by a strong Sachems offensive attack.
“Saugus was good, I’ll give them credit,” Ierardi said. “We just gave them a little too much credit in that first half. Our interior defense was awful. It was much better in the second half but we had to rely on our goalkeeper way too much. Carly had to make too many saves.”
The Sachems fired three shots on goal in the first eight minutes of play but Mendonca denied each chance.
“If it wasn’t for Carly, it could’ve been a lot worse,” Ierardi said. “But it wasn’t all negative. We have a young team. We have a lot of freshmen, a lot of first-year varsity players.”
That changed in the 17th minute when Kotkowski, who serves as one of Saugus’ five team captains, fired a shot past Mendonca and into the back of the net for the 1-0 Sachems lead.
“Alli played really well tonight,” Saugus coach Chris Coviello said. “We moved the ball around well and we really possessed it well.”
“I thought we possessed the ball well,” Coviello added. “Especially in the first half, I thought we made really good decisions with the ball. We were unlucky on a couple of shots but we played pretty well.”
The Saugus offense kept its foot on the petal, and Mendonca on her toes, for the remainder of the half. Classical dodged a couple bullets with a few Sachems shots that hit the top of the goalpost but Kotkowski gave Saugus a 2-0 lead just before the end of the half.
“It just wasn’t good enough in the first half,” Ierardi said. “All credit to Saugus, that’s a good team. We just gave them way too much respect in the first half.”
Nazzaro, also a Sachems co-captain, added a goal to the Saugus lead just three minutes into the second half. From there, the Rams were forced to play catch-up while the Sachems led comfortably en route to the 3-0 win.
“We moved the ball around well,” Coviello said. “I thought we played very well. Classical’s an up-and-coming team. They played very well and their goalie (Mendonca’s) going to keep them in a lot of games.”
Classical fell to 1-2 and will look to get back on the win column on Friday when the Rams battle against crosstown rival English at Manning Field.
“The good news is we have three days before we have to get ready for English,” Ierardi said. “We’re really going to have to buckle down for English.”
Saugus improved to 2-0 and hopes for another strong performance on Wednesday when the Sachems clash against English.
