WEST CANAAN — Mark Rockwood knew what he was signing up for.
The Mascoma High girls soccer program, which launched amid the COVID-19 pandemic in the fall of 2020, had won just one game in its first two seasons. That didn’t deter Rockwood, a longtime club soccer coach in Hopkinton, N.H., who took over for Denver Greene this summer, from trying to build the Royals into a contender.
“I didn’t come here for the record. That was one of the questions in the (interview), about how you’re going to handle not winning,” Rockwood said. “I’m here for the passion of the sport. I got blessed with a great group of kids. If it was any other group of kids, I’m not sure we would have such a positive season with how much we’ve lost and the adversity we have faced.”
Girls played on the Mascoma boys team prior to 2020, but they played on all-female teams at the youth level through the Mascoma Youth Soccer League. Indian River Middle School started a girls-only team a few years before the high school did.
The Royals fielded a roster of 14 in their inaugural season, five of whom played in the boys program the previous year. They lost all 12 games with an abbreviated schedule, but nobody was too discouraged.
“It was never certain if we would have one more game,” said Kayli Stapelfeld, now a senior co-captain who played club soccer with Lake Sunapee United. “We played every game like it was our last because it could have been, so it was a lot of picking each other up and getting people excited even if we’re losing. It didn’t matter what the win column was looking like; it was the fact that we had a team that was going to stay at Mascoma.”
Mascoma returned 10 starters from that first team for the 2021 season, which won the first game in program history with a 3-1 victory at Newfound on Sept. 29. The Royals finished 1-15-0 and missed the postseason, but the program was clearly picking up steam.
“(The first win) was one of those feelings I’m never going to be able to relive, but I don’t need to because I feel it in my heart whenever I think about it,” Stapelfeld said. “I don’t think about the win, but I think about the people who made that win really special.”
Just as things seemed to be trending in a positive direction, though, Mascoma’s future was thrown into uncertainty thanks to Greene’s departure. When she found out last spring that Greene would not be returning, Stapelfeld reached out to Tina Fleming, the then-interim principal at Indian River who was to become Mascoma’s principal this fall.
Stapelfeld told Fleming what the program needed to continue its growth, and Fleming, whose two daughters played college soccer, was fully on board.
“The girls all spoke to every grade level on the opening day of school recruiting kids,” Fleming said. “It really matters to them. It matters to me. They work hard, and they are ambassadors for the sport.”
Enter Rockwood, who knew Fleming through connections in the soccer world. Fleming reached out to Rockwood, who lives nearly an hour’s drive away in Hopkinton, and told him the Royals desperately needed a new coach — and they found one who has been coaching since he was in seventh grade.
Rockwood grew up in Haverhill, Mass., and played on a travel team that required him to coach at the intramural levels, but his playing career ended abruptly when he blew out his knee as a high school freshman.
He moved to Hopkinton after his son was born in 1999 and soon began coaching youth soccer there, helping feed talent into the powerhouse programs at Hopkinton High. The Hopkinton girls have won the last four NHIAA Division III state championships, while the boys have won two titles and played for two more in the last decade.
“I helped build that program for the past 20-plus years,” Rockwood said. “I’m good at building puzzles and identifying and managing talent. I enjoy the game, so why not come up and see if I can help (Mascoma) out?”
Rockwood was the first coach hired by Stephen Stebbins, who became the Royals’ athletic director this July. Stebbins, beyond being impressed with Rockwood’s experience, could tell Rockwood knew what to expect — that Mascoma was not going to become Hopkinton overnight.
“When you walk into a situation like that, you probably have expectations that you’re going to be able to change it a little quicker,” Stebbins said. “He’s done everything he can to help in the short term.”
The Royals started this season with just 11 players, leaving no room for substitutes or injury replacements. Mascoma’s roster has since grown by two, but a COVID-19 cluster resulted in multiple games being rescheduled and the Royals playing seven games in 11 days to close the season.
Junior Emily Seiler — the younger sister of Ben Seiler, Mascoma’s all-time leading scorer on the boys side — has scored eight of the 17 goals for a Royals team that lost its first 12 games before breaking into the win column Monday with a 4-1 home victory over Mount Royal on Senior Day. Senior Emma Bill, normally the starting goalkeeper, played in the field and scored her first goal of the season Monday, and Stapelfeld also notched the first goal of her career.
With several girls on the co-ed middle school team set to join the program next year and junior Alexis Patterson, currently the Royals’ manager while sidelined with an injury, slated to come back, the building blocks for sustained improvement are beginning to come together.
“People look at us as our record,” Stapelfeld said. “For any other team, that should knock the girls down, but not this team. This team has proven that we’re a really strong bunch and we have thick skin, and we’ve learned to tune everything out and just play our game.
“It’s not just about the wins and losses. It’s building a program that’s here to stay.”
Benjamin Rosenberg can be reached at brosenberg@vnews.com or 603-727-3302.