PEABODY — The Bishop Fenwick boys soccer team is really starting to round into form, and it showed it Wednesday afternoon. The Crusaders scored early and kept the pressure all game long, shutting out Catholic Central League foe Arlington Catholic, 4-0, at Donaldson Stadium.
“We had a really good offensive day today, and that was led by our three guys up front in Sean Kern, Tarek Nabbout and Sean Walsh who did an excellent job,” said Fenwick coach Tony Enos. “We’ve been working on putting some new systems into play, and the guys did a great job with that today.”
Kern scored two goals in the victory, while Brendan Crichton had one goal and one assist. Liam Crichton had one goal.
“The ball movement was excellent for us today, which was great to see because we’ve been working on lately,” Enos said.
The Crusaders were aggressive right from the opening kick, sending scoring chance after scoring chance right at the Arlington Catholic net. While the first few chances were either stopped or missed the net, Fenwick was able to cash in less than 10 minutes into the game on a goal by Kern, giving the Crusaders a 1-0 lead.
For the rest of the first half, it was actually Fenwick’s defense that stood out. Arlington Catholic began to try to push the pace on offense, but every time the Crusaders would break up a pass, kill the Cougars’ momentum and take the ball back the other way. Enos credited the solid defensive play on his experienced back line.
“Our back line is very strong, even though we have struggled a bit with the center-back position recently,” Enos said. “We tried something a little different today and it worked really well for us.”
Despite a couple more Fenwick scoring chances, the first half ended with the Crusaders up 1-0.
In the second half, Fenwick once again struck early. Just over five minutes into the half, Brendan Crichton knocked the ball off an opposing player’s foot in the offensive zone. Crichton then flipped the ball up into the air, slipped past a defender and settled the ball right back onto his left foot. After moving it over to his right foot, Crichton reared back and booted a strike into the back of the net to give Fenwick the 2-0 lead.
Crichton’s goal boosted the momentum another notch for the Crusaders. About seven minutes after Brendan Crichton found the back of the net, he sent a perfect assist to his brother, Liam Crichton, for a goal to make it 3-0.
Just under 10 minutes after Liam Crichton scored, Kern found some open space on the left side of the field and ran with the ball about 40 yards before firing a shot into the net for his second goal of the game.
Now at 2-2-1, the Crusaders are starting to look like the team Enos knows they can be. But with two more tough games early next week (both road games against Austin Prep and Archbishop Williams), there is still plenty of work to be done.
“We do a lot of video work here, and that’s going to be no different this coming week,” Enos said. “We’re going to prepare hard for both teams, work on some more strategy and hopefully come out with more performances like the one we had today.”
Fenwick takes on Austin Prep Monday (3:45).
