LYNNFIELD — Despite falling behind early, the Lynnfield boys soccer team rallied behind some great defense and a host of scoring opportunities to take down Hamilton-Wenham, 2-1, Monday afternoon at Pioneer Stadium.
“I thought we played pretty well out there today besides giving up that early goal,” said Lynnfield coach Brent Monroe. “I think we were able to dominate the play for the most part, but it was a hard-fought win. Hamilton-Wenham is always one of the best teams we play, and they beat us 3-0 last year, so this was a good win for us.”
The Pioneers (3-0-1) saw two players score their first goals of the season in junior Max Sieger and senior Jeremy Banks, while junior captain Jonathan Luders had two assists.
Hamilton-Wenham jumped out to an early lead, although Lynnfield really dominated the pace of play from the opening kick. But the Generals pushed the ball into the offensive zone and senior Alex Renaud got a ball in front of the net, a ball that junior Gabe Berthoud buried in the back of the net to give Hamilton-Wenham a 1-0 lead.
“It was a little bit of a weird goal, we should have cleared it out of there but couldn’t, so that was unfortunate,” said Monroe. “But we were able to fight back against a quality team, and it’s not easy to play from behind against a team like that.”
The goal didn’t seem to slow down the Pioneers much, if at all. Lynnfield continued to push the ball toward the net and dominate possession for the next 10 minutes of the first half. That time was filled with several quality scoring chances that didn’t find the back of the net, but the Pioneers were finally able to break through late in the first half.
With about eight minutes left in the half, Lynnfield pushed toward the net for another scoring opportunity. Luders sent a ball toward the net that found Sieger’s foot and Sieger sent a hard shot into the top-right corner of the net to tie up the score.
The Pioneers took that aggressiveness right up until the halftime whistle, then continued it into the second half. The aggressiveness paid off once again with just under 11 minutes remaining, on a play once again sparked by Luders. Banks took the ball up through the midfield and sent a pass to Luders, who immediately sent a give-and-go pass right back to Banks. With a clean look at the net, Banks wound up his left foot and blasted a shot from about 25 yards out that snuck right under the crossbar for the eventual game-winning goal.
“It was a great exchange between those two guys, that was great to see,” said Monroe. “(Hamilton-Wenham) is a tough team to break down, they’re hard to score against. So you’ve got to do things like that to get an open look, and Jeremy made a great shot.”
This was just the beginning of a tough week for the Pioneers, who will travel to Newburyport to take on the Clippers on Wednesday afternoon. For Monroe, the key is to just keep the train moving.
“I think the No. 1 thing for us is just getting results, however they come,” said Monroe. “I think we’re playing really well defensively so far and limiting the opposing team’s opportunities, so we’ll need to keep that up for sure.”
