BOW, N.H. — It felt like more than a regular-season Tuesday, as planned.
“We’ve had a pretty good season so far, but we knew this was going to be one of our hardest games,” Hanover’s Charlotte Johnson said. “So we were trying to prepare as much as possible and pretend like this was playoffs.”
The matchup between girls’ soccer royalty met its expectations. Bow took an early lead before Johnson scored an aerial hat trick and Hanover claimed a 3-2 win. The result kept the Marauders perfect at 15-0-0 and clinched the top seed in Division II. Bow dropped to 12-2-0, but the Falcons are in control of the race for second place and left the field feeling good.
“I thought we played great,” Bow coach Jay Vogt said. “We got beat on three corner kicks. They didn’t score in the run of play, so I’m happy with that. We’ve got to work on the corner kicks, but I thought it was a great game. At times we had it, at times they had it, back-and-forth, which is what I expect with Hanover.”
These are the two teams that have won the last three D-II titles (the Marauders in 2018 and ’16 and Bow in 2017) and they have 14 banners between them — five for the Falcons (four in D-III) and nine for Hanover (all in D-II). This season’s Marauders had been living up to their name, outscoring opponents, 71-2, coming into the game against Bow, which had outscored its opponents, 55-9.
The Falcons landed the first blow in the heavyweight battle when senior Lindsey Burnham jumped on a loose ball and sent a 20-yard shot into the corner to give Bow a 1-0 lead in the fifth minute.
“Lindsey can shoot,” Vogt said. “It was perfect.”
It also led to a new experience for Hanover — trailing.
“This was the first time we’ve been behind this season, and it definitely gave us a run for our money,” Johnson said. “We have good mojo when we’re in the lead, but we didn’t know what it would feel like when we were behind, and it felt like we all came together, we all stayed positive, which is really what got us get back into the game, it was energy.”
Both sides played with energy and skill after the goal, taking turns making runs at each other. Hanover sustained more pressure as the half wore down, and it paid off in Johnson’s first goal.
With less than two minutes on the clock, Kira Smith came up with a steal in midfield and found a streaking Pepper Joseph down the right wing. That led to two corners for Joseph, and the second one found an open Johnson, who hammered the header straight into the back of the net for a 1-1 halftime score.
The back-and-forth continued in the second half. Hanover owned the first 10 minutes and nearly scored when Casey McGuire ripped a ball just inches over the bar. Bow took the next 10, and Burnham blasted a pair of shots over the bar.
The ball finally found its way in using a familiar path. Once again it was Hanover’s Joseph creating the play that led to a corner kick, which Joseph delivered on the money to the athletic Johnson, who timed her leap and rose above the defenders to make it 2-1 with 20:54 left in the second half.
“We work on those corners almost every practice, and Pepper and I have been working hard just to connect with each other,” Johnson said. “I know when it’s coming in the air to just judge it off that, because of all the hard work we’ve been doing.”
Bow responded with pressure and nearly equalized off a pretty cross from Kristina Pizzi, but Hanover defender Eva Schiffman came up with a reaction save on the goal line.
Joseph and Johnson completed their corner kick hat trick in 86th minute. This time Johnson fought though traffic and headed the ball home with a bounce shot off the turf.
“She’s tough,” Vogt said of Johnson. “She just got up and over us and finished. Three nice balls where they needed to be and she finished them.”
The Falcons kept pushing in the last minutes, Pizzi sent another cross into the box, and this time no one was in the way to stop a nifty flick from Anna Lafreniere from making it 3-2. But there was only :30 left at that point, not enough time to knock Hanover from its undefeated perch.
“We’ve got to work on a few things, but I think we’re there,” Vogt said. “We know we can play with them.”