Lebanon
It was just the kind of resiliency second-year head coach Amanda Valliere was hoping for.
Gonyea, a sophomore, scored back-to-back goals 5 minutes and 30 seconds apart in the first half. Monadnock scored first before the Raiders answered with three goals before halftime.
Lebanon goaltender Hope Brown made seven saves in the victory.
It’s so far, so good for Valliere and the Raiders, who are 2-0 to start the season after a subpar 2017 campaign.
“Amanda is an amazing coach,” Gonyea said. “We’re just able to connect with her in such great ways. It creates such great chemistry for our team. It’s really nice.
“(Last year) motivates us so much more,” she added. “It makes us want to fight so much harder. … We don’t like to mention it, we don’t like to dwell on the past. But if we’re not playing well, it’ll be mentioned. It motivates us.”
On Monday, Gonyea scored the tying goal in the Raiders’ season-opening 3-1 win over ConVal.
Lebanon finished with a 4-9-1 record competing in NHIAA Division II last fall, Valliere’s first season after taking over the post from longtime mentor Deb Beach.
The Raiders managed only 25 goals and allowed 33 last season. Leah Mayes and Emily Hunnewell led the offense with a combined 16 goals and 13 assists, both of whom have since graduated.
One year later, her team now in D-III, Valliere said she feels a little bit more comfortable in her shoes.
“Not to say that last year was uncomfortable, it was just a transition year,” Valliere said. “The team was great last year, but I didn’t know them, they didn’t know me. We were all figuring each other out. That can create some … it’s not a smooth sail.
“The second year coming in, I know all of them, they all know me. We’re comfortable with each other’s styles,” she added. “They know what I’m looking for out of them. If you know your expectations, it makes it a lot easier to meet them.”
Despite the losses to the offense, Valliere said it was her team’s defense that needed to be redesigned. That new defensive structure was on display against Monadnock, keeping the Huskies pinned in their half for large chunks of the game.
Lebanon had its chances to score early and often, creating scrambles in front of Huskies goaltender Carly Bernard. But Izzy Sutton got Monadnock on the scoreboard first, when she finished off a counter-attack with a lifted shot over Brown.
Gonyea answered seven minutes later with a long shot through the crease that missed everybody except the net to tie the game, 1-1. Lebanon then scored two goals on corners before the end of the half, with Gonyea redirecting a long shot from Sydney Brochu and Katie Berthasavage burying a rebound with 2:05 left.
The Raiders outshot Monadnock, 22-4, held a 4-0 advantage on corners and led, 3-1, at halftime.
“Which is kind of what it was like at ConVal, too,” Valliere said of her team’s lopsided chances. “That’s something we definitely need to work on. But the passing is there, that we can get the ball down there is great. We’re working really hard defensively on recovery. … I’m happy with the way we played today. I definitely see areas we can improve upon, but we won.”
Brochu assisted on all three Lebanon goals in the first half. Jenny Lopez added to the lead in the second when she deflected a shot from Jenna Spaulding past an out-reached Bernard to make it 4-1. Monadnock scored with 13:24 left with a pass across the crease from Caitlyn Boucher to Sutton, but it was too little too late.
Monadnock (0-2) reached the D-III semifinals last year before falling to 10th-seeded Mascoma. Bernard was credited with 19 saves in the loss.
“We clearly had a way better second half than first half,” said Heath Haskell, Monadnock’s first-year head coach who formerly coached two seasons at Hartford High. “In the second half, I thought we controlled most of the play. When we played Kearsarge the other day, we had way more of the play in the first half. We just have to find those two halves and put them together.”
For Valliere, the motivation is there to get Lebanon back to the postseason.
“Last year totally fuels my fire,” she said. “As a former player and a coach, I don’t want to ever feel the way I felt last year in terms of our competition. For me, that’s really motivated me to … not change the way I am or the way I coach, but the intensity is a little bit higher.
“For the girls, too. Nobody wants to not go to the postseason. It stinks. We all want to go to the postseason. For them, knowing how it felt last year and not getting there is like, ‘OK, we’re going to go to the postseason.’ That’s the mentality that they have.”
Lebanon travels to Stevens (1-0) on Wednesday.
Josh Weinreb can be reached at jweinreb@vnews.com or 603-727-3306.