LYNN — It was a tough night for the KIPP Academy boys and girls soccer teams Tuesday as they each fell 2-0 to Salem Academy at Manning Field.
Despite a loss in the first game of the night’s double-header, the KIPP girls team, who had lost to Salem Academy last week 5-0, showed a lot of improvement, coach Archie Bandera said.
“We played much better than the game last week,” Bandera said. “This is the best we have played all season. We are missing a few players which happens. Our goalie Georgina Olivares played amazing, we were missing her the last game against this team.”
As they have for much of the season, the Panthers struggled to create scoring chances.
“If you look at the stats today we only had three shots and that doesnt help,” Bandera said. “Out of those shots one came five minutes before the half and the others came with less than 10 minutes in the game so that doesn’t help us.”
The Navigators scored their first goal with 23:54 remaining in the first half. Samiyah El-Ashkar slipped by two Panthers defenders and ripped a shot by Olivares to put Salem Academy ahead 1-0.
Despite solid defensive play in the Panthers’ half of the field and some great saves by Olivares, KIPP couldn’t create any offensive chances. Salem Academy’s Lindsey Russell added another goal with 15:22 to play and the Navigators held on to the 2-0 victory.
“We really don’t have strikers and it’s not because of a lack of effort but we don’t have a good practice field to work on these things,” Bandera said. “We practice at Lynn Tech but we don’t have nets so how can you practice shooting when you don’t have nets? That’s something we are trying to work with our school about.”
KIPP’s boys soccer team suffered from some of the same offensive problems the girls did. The Panthers had also loss 2-0 to Salem Academy last week.
“It’s tough but Salem is a good team,” Panthers coach Jon Langlois said. “I’ll give them that. They move the ball well and we were hoping we would come out and move the ball better today in the midfield. We were missing a couple key players today and it just didn’t fall our way tonight.”
Whatever offensive chances the Panthers did create were quickly shut down by Salem Academy goalkeeper Qasim El-Ashkar who had another great game against KIPP.
“Their goalkeeper is phenomenal,” Langlois said. “He made a couple of really good saves that just came out of nowhere. There aren’t to many keepers that are making saves like that.”
Both teams started the game with great defensive play in the first half. Salem Academy’s Wesoly Hanger was able to find some space however with 7:20 left in the half and ripped a shot to give the Navigators a 1-0 lead.
Hanger scored another goal early in the second half thanks to a nice set up pass by Michael Santana to put Salem Academy ahead 2-0.
The Panthers had their best chance of the day when Marco Escobar beat El-Ashkar to a loose ball in front of the net, but El-Ashkar made a sliding save to help Salem Academy hold on to the 2-0 lead.
“The good news is we did recently qualify for playoffs so we are in the state tournament,” Langlois said. “It gave me a good opportunity to get some of the bench guys in late. Obviously the game plan was to come out and really take these guys to town but the ability to get some of the guys who haven’t been getting playing time in will definitely work towards our advantage going into the playoffs.”
Both KIPP squads travel to Everett Thursday night for games against Pioneer Charter.
