Hanover
After a 2-4 start, the Marauders are steamrolling into the playoffs on a 10-game winning streak, having outscored opponents 44-5 during the run.
Now that they’ve jelled, watch out. Hanover (12-4) is determined to make a significant run in the tournament after being upset in the quarterfinals last year by Exeter and bowing out on penalty kicks in the semifinals each of two years prior to that.
“There’s a lot of hunger on this team,” said 12th-year Marauders coach Rob Grabill during a recent intrasquad scrimmage at Merriman-Branch Field. “Our seniors weren’t here last time we won a title (2013). None of the players here have been to a final. They want to know what it’s like.”
Hanover may now have designs on a deep postseason run, but it struggled at times while players assimilated early in the season. It didn’t help that co-captain stalwart Sam Pych — one of two returning starters, along with fellow midfielder Henry Kahl — missed the first six games with an ankle injury suffered while playing in a summer league.
Making things even more difficult was a top-heavy schedule against the likes of Londonderry (11-2-2), Exeter (11-2-2), Manchester Central (10-4-1) and Bedford (13-2) to start off. The Marauders went 0-4 against those foes, three of them by a final score of 2-1. Despite wins over Winnacunnet and a solid Pinkerton team during the same stretch, Hanover found itself two games under .500 for the first time ever under Grabill.
It was unfamiliar ground for a program that dominated Class I/Division II with six consecutive championships from 2005-10 and has remained fiercely competitive since petitioning to D-I beginning prior to the 2012 season.
“The first couple games, I think guys were coming out of their shells a little bit after we lost so many from last year and playing with such a young team,” said Kahl. “We had some 2-1 games in there, so we were close even while we were kind of trying to figure each other out.
“After the first six games, we started going north and south with the ball a little better, got our chemistry figured out and just kind of turned the page.”
Hanover’s personnel overhaul began in net, where junior Hans Williams — last year’s backup to Patrick Logan — and sophomore Joey Perras have eight starts each. Although they rotated throughout the regular season, Grabill said the team’s starter will be a game-by-game decision in the playoffs.
Williams and Perras have made their share of notable saves while combining for seven shutouts, and Hanover’s all-new starting back four has helped keep opponent chances to a minimum over the last five weeks.
Athletic freshman Matty Gardner, central defenders Ben Parrado and Gary Li and the sophomore combination of Noah Pikelny and Kyle Doucette have become reliable in stymieing the advances of foes and kick-starting Hanover’s trademark possession-oriented attacks.
Members of the back four haven’t been afraid to get involved in the offensive end. One case in point: Gardner’s winning header off a corner kick in a 1-0 win at Manchester Memorial on Oct. 6.
“They’re intelligent and excellent one-on-one, and they have the courage to go forward when we’re attacking,” Grabill said of his defense. “That last area is where they’ve grown the most.”
In the midfield, Kahl and Pych have been joined by senior classmate Earl Barrowes, who spent the first three years of his high school career as a member of Hampton, N.H.-based club team Seacoast United. Barrowes decided midway through last summer that he wanted to suit up for the Marauders for the first time this fall.
“It was basically a situation where I wanted to play with my friends,” said Barrowes, who has scored twice in the last three games. “It wasn’t because I didn’t like Seacoast. The coaches were very professional, and I definitely learned a lot. It was 10 months a year, so pretty much year-round training.”
Hanover has become exceptionally dangerous on restart plays, with Kahl (five goals, 12 assists) and frontliner Liam Collins (11 goals, five assists) doing much of the damage serving corners.
“We are scary good on set pieces,” Grabill said. “We’ve probably scored 10 goals off of them.”
The team’s leading scorer is Charlie Adams (11 goals, 13 assists), a sophomore who’s been playing the game since kindergarten and spent the fifth and sixth grades with his family in Cape Town, South Africa, where he also played.
“There was a great soccer culture there that I think stuck with me,” said Adams.
Adams feels his best attribute is passing, on display when he tied a 34-year-old, single-game program record with five assists in a 5-3 win over Timberlane earlier this month.
“It’s not like it was an 11-0 game and we left him in there too long; he earned every one of those assists,” Grabill said. “Charlie is the total package for us: finishing, passing, field vision, work rate, soccer IQ, maturity, humility, unselfishness. He’s not rushing his development, and neither are we. He’s letting events come to him.”
Unlike previous recent seasons when Hanover secured a first-round bye, the Marauders are locked into the No. 5 spot and will host a first-round game.
For a team on as much of a roll as Hanover, Grabill feels that will help the team maintain its rhythm despite what will be an eight-day layover between last week’s regular season finale and Wednesday’s kickoff. Hanover will know its opponent when pairings are released today.
“I’m not concerned about the layover because we’ll stay active and again, this team is hungry,” Grabill said. “As long as they’re facing each other in practice, they’re going to stay battle tested.”
Jared Pendak can be reached at jpendak@vnews.com or 603-727-3225.