By Meghan Foley
Hometown Weekly Staff
Last Friday, boys’ soccer played their first game of the postseason for the preliminary round of the playoffs against Montachusett Regional Vocational Technical School. “Monty Tech” is the 41st seed in D2 with a 9–6–3 record while Dover-Sherborn is the 24th with 8–9–1.
The Raiders got off to a slow start but made up for it with an exciting first goal. Just over ten minutes into the second half, sophomore midfielder Kevin Li fired a shot from the top of the box. The Monty Tech goalie tipped the ball and it hit off of the crossbar. Li ran in and had great timing with the bounce of the ball to head it over the goalie and into the net before the goalie could get back into position.
11 minutes later, sophomore midfielder Cam Hourihan was tripped in the box and Captain Scott Cronin took the penalty kick. He shot a groundball and though the goalie made contact, he was not able to make the save and the Raiders went up 2–0.
With about 10 minutes remaining in the game, a Monty Tech defender kicked a long ball from the box. Senior defender Graham Stoessell jumped to stop the ball around the 42-yard line and junior midfielder Colin Pham grabbed it. Pham passed it to freshman forward Ethan Dearborn, who took a shot from outside the box. Monty Tech’s goalie blocked the shot but it ricocheted off of his hands back into the box and past sophomore forward Sebastian Miller and the defender covering him. Miller doubled back and quickly made a shot past the goalie just feet in front of him. Pham ran after the shot in case, but there was no need, and the Raiders took a 3–0 lead with 9:48 left in the game.
“I think this was, you know—we have a lot of guys that haven’t been at this level as far as a tournament, so it was good to get a preliminary game under our belt,” said Head Coach Joe Gruseck after the win. “And I think as the game went on, we saw some, especially some of the younger guys, get more and more comfortable. And hopefully this—we’ve been kinda building as the season goes, so hopefully this gets us to build a little quicker. [We’re] moving the ball around well, we still gotta work on—we got a couple days practice, we gotta work on putting the ball in the back of the net a little earlier, obviously, we can’t let teams hang around, so, that’ll be the first [thing we address].”
“I think the chemistry’s been great,” Gruseck continued, “we had a lot of turnovers [since last year], so we knew we were gonna hit some adversity and bumps during the road, but these guys, any adversity we hit, they stuck together … each team’s unique and different, but they’re a fun group.”
“I think it’s—for this year, it’s a little different,” he concluded. “We’re kind of a lower seed [this year], so I think the—I don’t think people are looking at us the way they have in the past, but I think that we have talent here, … [I’m] excited to see how much they developed and how much … what they’ve learned through the season comes out in the next game or so.”
The boys’ schedule can be found either at arbiterlive.com or on the MIAA website at: https://www.miaa.net/tournaments/tournament-central/tournament-brackets.
