Claremont
The Cardinals got the early jump and moved to a 5-0 lead before the Tigers changed gears and got two late goals. Both teams entered the game 3-3.
“Down 2-0 at half, we knew the next goal was crucial, but we didn’t play with much intensity for the first 20 minutes and they put the game away,” said Newport head coach Jon Hamel. “We need to come out with 80 minutes of intensity and we didn’t. You didn’t see our best tonight.”
Hamel’s pregame strategy involved having his players mark Cardinals Kelsey Belisle and Jazz Griffin.
“Check No. 14 (Belisle),” he yelled as Stevens got ready to take its first corner just 90 seconds into the game. But nobody checked No. 14. When the ball came out to Belisle, she had a clear shot from 20 yards out and rammed it inside the post to Newport keeper Anna Pysz’s right.
“Did you aim for the corner,” she was asked.
“Nah, I just hit it,” she said.
Stevens, after a 1-3 start, is over .500 for the first time this season. The change of fortune has Cardinals head coach Tom Belaire feeling a little better about the season.
“We’re coming and it seems like it’s a different player every night stepping up,” he said.
There was also some concern, on both sides, about the NHIAA’s change in playoff system. For the first time, a 70 percent rule will determine how many teams in each division will make the postseason. There are 19 teams in Division III, meaning 13 will be eligible.
Though Newport has already won three games, Hamel is worried as he listed off the teams he has yet to play and knows that nothing is assured.
“It’s a little tougher for us than some teams because we don’t have a junior varsity team and our middle school team is coed,” he said. “There are some good teams in Division III.”
One of the areas that Belaire said his team is working on was playing the ball to the corners, “and I think we did that tonight,” he said. “We also took advantage of our dead ball situations.”
Like Hamel, Belaire thought the first 20 minutes of the second half decided the game. Just before play began fog rolled onto the field. Maybe it spooked the Tigers, who seemed to go into a lull.
“We couldn’t even get the ball out of own end,” Hamel said.
As a result the Cardinals tacked on three more goals in the first 17 minutes and put a lock on the game at 5-0.
After Stevens took a 1-0 lead, the Tigers tightened up on defense and moved the ball into the offensive zone. Even though they failed to score, they were keeping the Cardinals out of the attacking area until Griffin misdirected a corner kick past Pysz to make it 2-0 at the break.
Any chance Newport had of making it a game dissipated when Stevens’ Beth McNamara sent a scorching ball that hit the underside of the crossbar and dropped in to make it 3-0.
Belisle and Griffin added their second goals of the night to account for the Stevens scoring.
Freshman Anna Caron and sophomore Caty Boles had the Newport scores late in the game.
Stevens finished with a 17-7 edge in shots on goal and 9-6 in corners.
Stevens has another home game on Wednesday against Windsor. Bishop Brady is at Newport on Friday.