LEBANON — Delaney DeShane’s tenacity paid off for the Lebanon High girls soccer team in a 1-0 victory over Stevens on Friday in the NHIAA Division II season opener for both teams.
The junior striker scored the game’s lone goal on a play that typified her playing style, according to Raiders coach Breck Taber.
“Scrappy,” he said. “That’s what you want up front.”
Lebanon (1-0) was attacking during the eighth minute when the Cardinals made a series of back passes to goalie Hailey Knight. A few were successful, but then DeShane capitalized on a mishap by stealing the ball and scoring.
“What we didn’t want her to do is just exhaust herself chasing the ball,” Tabor said. “She was opportunistic down there, a little bit of pressure and got the ball and thankfully put it in the back of the net.”
Knight was in a tough position, unable to use her hands on the passes because they were deliberately kicked by her teammates. Goalies are permitted to handle headers, throw-ins and misdirected kicks from teammates, but must play booted back passes with their feet.
“(We were) too slow playing it to the goalie,” said Stevens coach Tim St. Pierre. “The keeper was closed down by the time the ball got there. So really, I don’t question the decision. The decision was right; we did it successfully 20 times today. It was the execution of trying to do it on time, a couple of bad touches and it just closed it down, and we made a bad choice.”
Knight, a junior, put in a strong performance with 13 saves for the Cardinals (0-1).
“She came out of nowhere last year and by the time she’s done, she will have accolades,” said St. Pierre, who has coached high school soccer for 30 years and is now in his second with the Cardinals. “She’s an outstanding goalkeeper. It was not her fault today; it was we made some mistakes in the back, but we’ve got to learn how to finish.”
Lebanon goalie Madelyn Newton, who made nine of her 11 saves during the second half while the sun was shining in her eyes, withstood a late barrage of shots.
“When you get behind — and unfortunately we made one bad decision the whole game that cost us the goal — but when you get behind, as the minutes shrink, you start to go more direct because you’re trying to play catch-up instead of maybe a better last ball that we’d normally serve,” said St. Pierre. “And that was really based on us just trying to rush a little bit too much.”
Taber thought his team’s debut performance wasn’t bad, but “I thought Stevens outplayed us,” he said. “They had more opportunities, they had way more corner kicks and I think we were fortunate to come out with the outcome that we did. … I think we gave them a little too much time, but it’ll come.”
Lebanon, which provided a clinic to seventh and eighth graders following Friday’s game, had just two corners kicks, both of which were in the first half. Stevens’ seven corners were all in the second half.
The Cardinals moved from Division III to Division II before last year but played a scattered schedule due to COVID-19. “We are the smallest Division II school,” said St. Pierre, whose team includes nine starters and 17 players from last year’s roster. “And this is our first run at it. … We are in midseason form from where we were a year ago. I hope it’s not midseason form for this year; I hope we’ve got a big gap still to go.”
The Raiders hit the road, visiting Souhegan on Tuesday. Stevens is off until hosting Kingwood on Friday night.