Sharks Put Up Three Hat Tricks Among Full Slate Of Weekend Games At Monomoy

October 08, 2025

by Erez Ben-Akiva

HARWICH – The green field at Monomoy Regional High School felt like — and very well may have been — the center of the Lower Cape sports universe Saturday.

Three Sharks teams — girls soccer, field hockey and boys soccer — took to the turf in succession, hosting opponents coming from as near as Hyannis and as far as western Massachusetts in a day of matches that began in the morning and concluded in the mid-afternoon. In the end, Monomoy student-athletes posted three hat tricks — a trio of three-goal performances — and laid out a set of games that spanned the spectrum of offensive and defensive success.

Girls Soccer Sets Off Goal-Scoring Explosion

Senior Riley Hesse and junior Rylie Gillis don’t just have nearly identical first names. Their middle names are also both Elizabeth.

The two Sharks midfielder/forwards — who have also played on club and town teams together — bear a resemblance in names befitting the symbiosis they show on the pitch. Against Mashpee on Saturday, both Hesse and Gillis notched hat tricks, each helping the other out along the way to their three-goal mornings.

The 7-2 win was by far Monomoy’s best offensive match of the season, the seven scores — three from Hesse, three from Gillis and one from senior midfielder/forward Mackenzie Bowers — almost doubling the team’s goal total on the entire season in one day. The Sharks hadn’t scored in their previous three games and had scored once in their last five (in a 1-1 draw also against Mashpee).

“I do think sometimes you need to have one of those games to kind of open it up and get people's confidence up, because they've been playing great all year but not finding the goals and, I think, getting frustrated,” head coach Jenn Peterson said.

Monomoy led 2-1 at the half off two scores by Gillis. The Sharks struck first, but Mashpee responded close to midway through the half. Less than 30 seconds after that equalizer, Gillis ran past Mashpee’s backline and hit a strike that ricocheted off the opposing goalie and bounced into the left side of the net.

Twelve minutes into the second half, Mashpee (0-9-1) found another game-tying goal. Only about 15 seconds later this time, Hesse took a ball up the left sideline and drilled her first score of the day to put the Sharks ahead. Not even a minute later, pressure by Gillis on a Mashpee ballhandler in their own penalty box created a pass that Hesse intercepted for another goal. Two minutes later, Hesse scored again for good measure — and the hat trick.

“It feels really awesome, especially my senior year, playing with people I played with forever, just celebrating with them and getting those goals,” Hesse said afterwards. “It feels really awesome, and to share it with Rylie, it feels great. Really proud of us.”

Midway through the second half, Gillis chased a ball past Mashpee’s defense and drilled one for a hat trick of her own to match Hesse’s.

“I think we have a really good connection on the field and off the field,” Gillis said.

Bowers followed with one final score, Monomoy’s seventh, in the match’s waning minutes. Hesse, Gillis and Bowers have delivered the goals for Monomoy all year. Hesse has game-changing speed, Gillis is a bulldog who can win the ball and keep it, doing what she can to get a shot off, and Bowers is a combination of both, Peterson said.

Gillis and Peterson both said they hoped the big offensive game created some momentum in ensuing matches. That happened, as the Sharks (4-6-2) then beat Sturgis East 5-0 on Monday, putting up their best and second-best single-game scoring totals in consecutive matches.

On the other end of the field, the Sharks have continued to utilize a two-goalie rotation, as they’ve done all year, with senior Olivia Eldredge in the first half and junior Abigail Leighton in the second. While the program balances the present with development, each goalkeeper brings something different to the position, as Leighton tends to use athleticism to come out and hunt balls more whereas Eldredge stays in her line and directs, Peterson said.

“It's been working out so far, and it hasn't, I don’t think, hurt us any and is helping us build for the future by having a goalie that's getting minutes this year,” she said.

Field Hockey Takes Down Yet Another Top Opponent

Bolstered by a hat trick from junior Emery Cappallo and a shutout by sophomore Maddy Swett, the Monomoy field hockey team again handed a previously undefeated school their first loss of the season (something they’ve gotten in the habit of doing), this time beating Longmeadow 5-0.

Longmeadow, ranked No. 4 in Division 2, entered Saturday 10-0-0 on the year. The five goals were the most allowed by Longmeadow in a game this year.

Senior Lauren Henderson started the afternoon for the Sharks, scoring on a penalty corner in the first quarter. In the second quarter after another penalty corner, Cappallo broke out a backhanded spin and hit a shot that bounced and found the back of the goal.

Cappallo’s next two goals fully demonstrated her propensity for big hits, whether in the form of shots or passes. Her second of the game came in the third quarter, a top-shelf score shot from distance, and the third came after a fourth quarter penalty corner in which Cappallo’s drive rattled the cage.

“They definitely do utilize me in the midfield a lot, because I can get long balls to the forward, so it helps,” Cappallo said. “I feel like my drive is hard enough, so most of the time it gets there.”

In between those goals, senior Sam Clarke added a fourth quarter score. Junior Kate Huse had four assists. Cappallo assembled the hat trick just days after earning her 100th career point earlier in the week.

“I put in a lot of work to get to that point, and I haven't always played forward, so it's been a huge jump for me,” she said. “But I feel like also just our team as a whole was able to make that possible for me, so I didn't do it on my own. It was honestly a team effort.”

Monomoy (8-3-1, ranked No. 2 in Division 4) then went on to defeat Division 2 No. 10 seed Duxbury (4-6-1) on Monday.

Boys Soccer Almost Hangs On Against Undefeated Saint John Paul II

The Monomoy boys soccer team (4-4-4) was five seconds away from beating Saint John Paul II 1-0 on Saturday in what would have been perhaps the Sharks’ signature victory of the season against a team that has yet to lose a game all year.

But JPII (6-0-4) mounted an unrelenting attack in the second half against a beat-up Monomoy team. In the match’s final minute, JPII found the 1-1 equalizer, bouncing a ball just past the goal line after a scramble off a corner kick.

“I think in the end that they're a quality opponent, so full credit to them for what they put into the game, but we couldn't seem to find that second goal, which made it always a little bit suspect right to the end,” head coach Keith Clark said.

The Sharks went up toward the end of the first half, with junior Alex Connell moving with the ball in the middle of JPII’s box, leading to senior Sunder Elisme turning the corner on the left side of the field and hitting a shot into the top of the net.

Monomoy played down multiple starters, missing sophomore Chris Shea, junior Jean Celine and senior Patrick McMahon.

“This was a quality opponent,” Clark said. “We knew that, and, we were a little beaten up, and we had to figure out what to do.”

The Sharks went on to beat Cohasset (5-5-3) 3-1 on Monday.