Monomoy Girls Soccer Defense Delivers In Early Season Tie

HARWICH – Depending on the circumstances or the way a game turns out, sometimes there are good ties and sometimes there are bad ties.

Amid a stretch where the Monomoy girls soccer team is in some ways still figuring out its personnel, to head coach Jenn Peterson a 1-1 draw against Nantucket last Friday was a good tie.

Monomoy entering the season returned its top three goal scorers from last year in midfielder/forwards senior Mackenzie Bowers, senior Riley Hesse and junior Rylie Gillis. But the Sharks graduated All-Star goalie Maya Flaherty and some key defenders, so there were questions surrounding the team’s defense heading into the season.

In the early league match Friday, Nantucket — which last year went 10-5-3, good for the No. 22 seed in the Division 4 state tournament, four spots higher than 9-8-1 Monomoy — broke a scoreless stalemate five minutes into the second half after a crosser found a Whaler right in front of the goal.

But a Riley-Rylie connection, that part of the Monomoy roster that isn’t so indeterminate, responded. About 10 minutes after the Nantucket score, Hesse broke down the left touchline and crossed it to a wide-open Gillis, who could nearly tap the equalizer in.

“I was trying to go towards the goal, and I heard Rylie from across the way, so I wanted to give it to her, because she's a very good shooter,” Hesse said. “She always gets them in the goal, so I just wanted her to finish it.”

With Monomoy still discovering who they are on the defensive side of the field, battling injury and at one point playing a player down (junior midfielder Samantha Stewart was sent off with a red card in the second half), the 1-1 final was a tie they’ll take. 

“It was pretty evenly matched,” Hesse said. “It was a hard game, but we have a lot of young girls, but we're all coming together and trying to work hard.”

The Sharks have been missing senior defender Ava Larocco, the team’s starting center back, who broke her toe and is out for at least four weeks, according to Peterson. As a result, Monomoy has shifted players and formations to balance defense with generating offense. Bowers, for instance, moved up and down positionally Friday. That moving and changing around will continue in the absence of Larocco.

“I like to have at least one in the back that has that speed and can catch up and make up for mistakes, and that's her, and so it's hard to replace,” Peterson said.

The goalkeeper spot is also currently an open competition. Senior Olivia Eldredge started against Nantucket, while junior Abigail Leighton took the second half. 

“They’re very different and bring different things to the game, and I told them for now, as long as they're both giving us the best chance to win, we'll stay like this until one kind of pulls away,” Peterson said.

Even with all that seems to be up in the air, the Monomoy defense and goaltenders hung firm against Nantucket. The Whalers mostly controlled possession, and during the first half in particular launched a salvo of shots, some of which weren’t on frame while Eldredge saved the rest. Leighton racked up a handful of saves in the second half.

“It's a lot of new defense, so it's pretty intense, but they stuck it out and they did a really good job staying strong, and it was a really aggressive team, so they held their own,” Hesse said.

The offense, in the Gillis goal on a Hesse assist, came from exactly where Monomoy expected and will expect throughout the season. Gillis, Hesse and Bowers — that scoring core — are all fast, all can hit a ball and all play well with each other, Peterson said. 

The idea is to get the ball wide to spread the defense out and then push it to one of the three players. With the ball at their feet on the attack and running toward defenders, there’s a lot Gillis, Hesse and Bowers can do to keep defenses on their toes, according to Peterson. The equalizer Friday fully reflected the concept.

“That's the type of chemistry they have,” Peterson said. “We really work on it in practice a lot, putting them together all the time and making sure they have that sense of where they're going to be and how they can play together and use each other.”