By Meghan Foley
Hometown Weekly Staff
The girls’ soccer team had an incredible season last year, going 17–1 and taking the state championship for the third year in a row. This season, the Warriors have been building up their record and were 10–0 at the end of last week. United Soccer Coaches regularly publishes their national rankings of teams and recently the Warriors tied for third place on their ranking. Their Pre-Season Poll had Medfield at #4 and the Warriors are sitting at fifth in their latest list, behind teams from Indiana, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee.
After the “three-peat” win last year and a current 10–0 record, the Warriors have a lot going on outside of each individual game.
“I mean, I think it’s definitely a lot of pressure,” responded Head Coach Melinda Lohan. “It’s something that we’ve built over the past four years, making it to quarterfinals, making it to a semi, actually gettin’ the job done last year, there isn’t a ceiling that we’ve seen so far, and it’s exciting now, though, because now there are also a lot of people who are looking to put that barrier in place for us, so every game that we play we know we’re playing against another opponent and they’re playing their best game. So, the pressure is definitely there. We have to show up and we have to play, we can’t have a second where we get anything off or we get to take breaks, we know the pressure is on us, and we—our girls are rising, which is what we’re most proud of.”
About United Soccer Coaches’ #3 ranking, Lohan said:
“We have a lot of talent. … And we have, not only one or two girls who are talented, we’re really fortunate to have a lot of depth, and that they are such selfless players, too, and that they work together to build each other up, they are not selfish in the way that they play, like—Sid [Heavey]’s the one who goes down in the box and she gives it to Audrey [Grandinetti], who needed a goal, and Sid already had one, and Audrey deserves one, the way she played tonight, and the way she’s working,” Lohan said, referencing their 4–1 win over Dedham where their goals were scored by Devon Weafer (assisted by Heavey), Sidney Heavey, Audrey Grandinetti, and Heavey again (assisted by Grandinetti).
“They think of each other all the time,” Lohan continued, “and that raises the bar in practice, that raises the bar in a game, and that level of talent then, it trickles down into younger generations who want to play at that level, and that’s what we’re starting to experience now, is seeing the younger athletes come up and want to be apart of the program where they’ve seen these girls work hard to earn the status that they have right now, but I’ve also seen them work hard to keep it, it’s one thing to earn it, it’s another thing to keep it, and they put in the work every single day to do that.”
Goalie coach Mimi Borkan reflected:
“I think as coaches we’re just really proud of our girls, we’re really proud of the way they showed up in preseason, they knew the pressure would be on them and they put in the training in the offseason, and they came to us ready to go. They have the high expectations of us as coaches, which we appreciate, they want us to be at our best game so that we can prepare them to be at their best, so it’s a nice mutual relationship, which is always the dream, as a coach, to have a team that you know has mutual respect amongst the coaching staff and then also the athletes, and we’re just really happy to take this ride together. We’ve got October, and then as far as we’re fortunate enough to get in November, right, that’s the best part about November, is nothing’s guaranteed, so we’re enjoying our guaranteed part of our season that we have left, with banking the things that we’re doing well, or the things that we have to work on as we move forward and get ourselves ready for hopefully a strong postseason.”
“We’ve got a couple of really big games coming,” Said Lohan .“Anything in the TVL is always gonna be challenging, we’re so fortunate to play in a league that is going to challenge us every single game, but we also have some great non-league games coming up as well that are gonna be some great contention for preparation for postseason as well, that’ll just be different outside of the TVL, so having some of those opponents in a Concord-Carlisle, a Franklin, we just played OA [Oliver Ames], we’ve got a lot of that type of competition coming as well, that’s gonna be really helpful, and just a different look, and looking at different experience outside of our league where we get to see them twice, just to have some new faces in there.”
The Warriors’ remaining home games will be on Monday, October 19th against Ashland (3–5–2) at 5:00 and Wednesday, October 28th against Holliston (3–3–4) at 6:00.
Warriors’ schedules can be found online at: arbiterlive.com.
