LYNN — Spurred on by two goals within the first 10 minutes of game action, the St. Mary’s girls soccer team rolled to a decisive 8-0 win over Greater Lowell at Manning Field on Monday afternoon. The two early goals provided a spark that’s been sorely needed by the Spartans over the past couple of weeks.
Kayla Demers led the offensive charge for the Spartans with three goals, while Sherly Feliz had one goal and one assist. Gaby Diaz-Martinez, Susanna Cornell, Katie O’Neill and Julia Nickolau each had one goal. Jenna Foley and Joslyn Deschenes added one assist each in the win.
“It was a good win for us today,” said St. Mary’s coach Jim Foley. “We’re starting to put the ball in the net as of late, which is something we’ve struggled with this year. But the last few games have been really good for us.”
The Spartans were aggressive from the opening kick, pushing the ball into the offensive zone right away. St. Mary’s earned a couple of corners within the first few minutes, barely missing on some scoring chances. Then, with just over 31 minutes remaining, the Spartans earned another corner. The ball was sent into the box to a waiting Foley, who stopped the ball on her foot and slipped a quick pass through the box to Diaz-Martinez for the first goal of the game. Just over a minute later, Feliz sent a perfect pass to Demers for her first goal of the game, making it 2-0 in quick fashion.
“That’s huge for us, because when we’ve come out and scored early this year we’ve done really well,” Foley said. “It’s the games when we can’t score that we have issues, because we don’t play that well from behind. But jumping out early like that, that’s key for us.”
After the Spartans possessed the ball for much of the rest of the first half, Demers scored her second goal after cleaning up a rebound with 10:47 left before the break to make it 3-0.
The second half was much of the same. Demers continued her hot streak, cleaning up yet another rebound to notch a hat trick with 37 minutes left in the game. About six minutes later, Cornell used her height to knock in a header off an assist from Deschenes on a corner kick to stretch the lead to 5-0.
There was a bit of a lull in scoring over the next 20 minutes of game action, but the Spartans continued to dominate ball possession.
“It’s obviously great to be able to possess the ball for the majority of the game like that,” said Foley. “When you do that, you can earn a lot of scoring chances and you don’t give up many goals. We’ve only given up one goal in the last three games, so it’s been working for us.”
St. Mary’s notched three goals in the final 11 minutes of play. O’Neill, Feliz and Nickolau all scored unassisted goals to help the Spartans coast to a victory.
Now at 7-6-3, St. Mary’s needs just one more point to earn a berth in the state tournament. With two games left in the season, Foley wants to get it done on Wednesday.
“We’d like to get this done as soon as possible, for sure,” he said. “We want to get it out of the way as quick as we can so we can just focus on getting better.”
St. Mary’s will play a road game against Lowell Catholic on Wednesday before closing the season against Pentucket on Saturday.
