Nashua, n.h.
“We’re not going home like Pembroke,” Chickering told his teammates prior to their own extra-time encounter with No. 4 Windham. “We’re going home like Goffstown.”
Then Chickering did something about it.
The lanky senior midfielder won a head ball, then one-touched a through pass to forward Luke Sandmann. The Raider junior sped through two Windham defenders and beat Jaguars goalkeeper Ryan Lanouette with a 16-yard roller in the eighth minute of overtime, giving Lebanon a 2-1 win.
Winners of 16 consecutive games, the Raiders (17-1-0) haven’t played much come-from-behind futbol this year. But a smart possession attack, stellar defense and calm demeanor allowed Lebanon to overturn a fifth-minute Windham goal, answer by the mid-point of the second half and win on a strike by its top scorer this year.
“It’s tough to convert against a great team,” said Sandmann, owner of a team-best 12 goals on the campaign. “The thing is staying persistent and just working until the very end of the game. I think that’s how we got the result.”
Goffstown also won a 2-1 overtime decision in Wednesday’s lid-lifter, ousting No. 2 Pembroke on Mike Fortin’s decider 1:06 into extra time. The Grizzlies (14-4-1) and Raiders meet for the D-II title on Saturday at Southern New Hampshire University.
Lebanon shook off a sluggish first half that saw the Jags’ Connor Brennan score in the fifth minute on the match’s first shot. Windham put another shot off the left post behind Raider goalkeeper Davis Cole minutes later, losing central defender Carter Adams to a back injury in the process.
Instead of panicking, Lebanon methodically massaged the match to meet its own style of play. Holding the ball for 65 to 70 percent of the contest, the Raiders were able to dictate play against a Windham 3-5-2 formation that Lebanon coach Rob Johnstone admitted isn’t one his players often see.
“There’s three central, high-quality defenders there; you can’t go through it, (so) you’ve got to go around it,” Johnstone said. “For us, the amount of corner kicks we got in the second half, the amount of fouls we drew in the second half, that was because we could keep it long enough to find that space behind their wide midfielder, their wide back.”
Brennan put Windham on the board first at 4:45. Midfielder Kyle Cocciardi stepped inside a Lebanon defender to roll a pass to Brennan, who toe-poked a 12-yarder past the helpless Cole (two saves).
Despite being between a Windham attacker and the ball, Adams was called for a foul just outside the Lebanon penalty area five minutes later and got the worst of the contact. As he received treatment off the field, later to be superbly replaced by senior Jacob Peress, Windham’s Zac Colvin sent the ensuing free kick off the post.
It proved to be the wake-up call the Raiders needed. “We normally don’t let it affect us,” Lebanon midfielder Nate Gariepy said. “We know how good we are, that we can get it back, so we don’t think about it too much. We move on from it and know we have to get the next one.”
It took a while, but Lebanon did.
The Raiders dominated possession to open the second half and forced Lanouette to work to keep Windham in front. Lanouette had to leap to tap a speculative 25-yard Gariepy bid off the crossbar four minutes into the second half, the ricochet hitting the Jaguar netminder and rolling wide. The Raiders had a potential goal wiped out second later on goalkeeper interference, but Lebanon kept up the pressure, especially wide.
A Windham foul finally opened the door for the equalizer. Gariepy took a 35-yard free kick with his right foot from the left wing, looking to swing the ball into the center of the Windham box for a teammate’s head. The ball instead missed everyone and bounded past the late-to-react Lanouette (four saves) at 57:53.
“We had a rough first 10 minutes of the game, then started to get our mojo back,” Gariepy said. “We recovered during halftime, talked about stuff we had to fix and did it.”
The Jags threw a scare into the Raider faithful with 13 minutes left, having an apparent score of their own whistled when Tim Polychronopoulous submarined Cole in pursuit of a corner kick. Gariepy came back five minutes after that with another free kick that required another leaping Lanouette tap-over save.
Greg Fennell can be reached at gfennell@vnews.com or 603-727-3226.