Woodsville
Luckily, the Engineers are finding their stride at the right time.
Woodsville is 11-4-0 heading into today’s regular-season finale at home against Gorham. The Engineers have won eight of their last nine games to put themselves back into title contention. Two of those wins in Woodsville’s second-half surge have come against the top teams in NHIAA Division IV — a 1-0 win over No. 5 Littleton (11-3-2) on Oct. 9 and a 1-0 win against No. 3 Profile (12-2-1) on Tuesday. The Engineers begin postseason play next week.
Ann Loud, Woodsville’s 10th-year head coach, equated the turnaround to her team’s focus on consistency. The Engineers started the season 3-3 before getting some traction.
But Woodsville’s players admitted the season — especially early on — had not been easy.
“We started off pretty slow,” sophomore forward Olivia Sarkis said during Thursday’s practice at the Woodsville Community Field. “We were playing a lot of freshman players. … It was tough without any older role models.”
The Engineers feature four juniors, eight sophomores, five freshmen and no seniors. It’s a dramatic shift in team dynamics from last year’s senior-heavy roster led by vocal Molly Clough, scoring leader Suzy Bazzell and sweeper Lily Kinder. Bazzell and Clough combined for 29 goals and 24 assists last season, leaving the offense with just as big of a sizable hole.
Enter Sarkis, whose scoring touch has helped the Engineers keep pace with some of the stronger teams in D-IV. She has 16 goals and six assists in 16 games this season, matching her goal totals from a year ago.
“I think it’s just a mentality change for me,” Sarkis said. “Playing with Molly and Suzy, I was only a freshman. I think a lot of our freshmen are playing well enough to score.”
For Loud, her team’s biggest issue has been inconsistency — a strong game against a tough opponent, followed by a lackadaisical effort days later.
Some of that, she admitted, is a byproduct of having no senior leadership.
“We play up and down,” Loud said on Thursday. “Our first game was against Sunapee, that was a nightmare, and then we played Newmarket (two games later) and it was like a whole new team showed up. We lost, but I was actually really happy with the way we played. … That’s what our season has been like.”
Some of Woodsville’s players said the inconsistency was just as frustrating to play through.
“We weren’t stepping up,” junior goaltender McKenzie Dennis said. “We weren’t putting anything together. We weren’t communicating. It was like we were playing down to our opponent.”
Added junior Sarah Britton: “It’s frustrating because we know what we have to do better.”
Woodsville hasn’t been to a state final since falling in back-to-back seasons to Sunapee in 2013 and Derryfield in 2014, and it has not won a state title since 1994.
Derryfield is now competing in D-III; Sunapee remains the cream of the crop in D-IV, having won the last two championships. The Lakers knocked Woodsville out of the playoff in the semifinals last year.
But the Engineers are eager to join D-IV’s upper echelon. To get there, Loud said her team needs to find another gear. Sarkis said her team needs to find a vocal leader — crucial for big moments late in the tournament.
What’s better: With no seniors, everyone on Woodsville’s roster is eligible to return next fall, giving the Engineers two shots at their goal. By the end of it, Loud believes her program will be in a much better place.
“To finish this year, they’ve got to keep this confidence up. They’ve really been pumped for the last few games,” Loud said. “They need to come into (the playoffs) like that and be ready like that.”
Josh Weinreb can be reached at jweinreb@vnews.com or 603-727-3306.