LYNN — Revere made its way to Manning Field to take on Lynn English in girls soccer action on Thursday. Despite a 5-0 Patriots’ win, you could say it was much closer than the final score.
“We worked hard. We were down, 1-0, at the half [with a] couple mistakes. We have a young soccer team, a lot of first-year players, and quite a few girls who have never played soccer before… playing as hard as they can,” said English coach Peter Pappagianopoulos. “The growth that they have shown since the start of camp is incredible.”
The lone goal of the first half came from Revere’s Eliana Humphrey. But from there, the Patriots charged, led by a second-half hat-trick from – guess who – Humphrey.
“We tried to switch our formation in the second half. We were way too defensive in the first half, so we wanted to come out more offensive in the second,” Pappagianopoulos said. “They scored a couple early ones. I’ll take the blame for those. I tried something that we haven’t tried at practice [and it] didn’t work, but if we don’t score, we don’t win either, so we had to try things.”
Despite losing, the Bulldogs had some great looks from Mariah Fowler and a strong defensive game from Marly Perez.
A goal by Gayle Mishic sealed the deal for the Patriots, who put the finishing touches on a dominant performance. Revere scored two of its five goals in the final 10 minutes
“I thought it was a slow start,” said Revere coach Ariana Rivera. “We had to light a little fire under ourselves, but definitely a much better half. I thought we shared the ball a little bit, we changed up our formation up top, and played a little bit more on the attack as well… We had a rough game in our last outing, so we definitely needed this one to pick us back up.”
For a Lynn English team with little experience, it showed no quit and sent great opportunities toward the net.
“We have 24 girls every day at practice working as hard as they can, so I love the effort, the work,” Pappagianopoulos said. “I love everything they are putting into it.”
Owen Finn is a student at Endicott College studying journalism
