Wilson's second-half hat trick helps NDA soccer end Whitman-Hanson's Division 2 reign

HINGHAM -- Uneasy lay the crown all year for the Whitman-Hanson High girls soccer team.

The Panthers were the Division 2 state champions in 2021, capping a 17-win season with a victory over Patriot League rival Silver Lake in the title game at Hingham. It was a magical campaign, but the follow-up seemed cursed from the very start.

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Graduation took a big bite out of the roster as Whitman-Hanson said goodbye to talent such as All-New England midfielder Olivia Borgen (23 goals) and EMass First Team midfielder Ava Melia. Then the injury bug hit – hard – as four players, including star senior forward Kayla Cassidy (18 goals a year ago), suffered ACL tears before the season even kicked off.

The Panthers won just three games in the regular season, all of them in September. A tough Patriot League schedule boosted their power ranking enough to qualify for the Division 2 playoffs as a No. 29 seed, and W-H did win a preliminary round game, quite decisively. But the Panthers' reign ended abruptly on Monday as fourth-seeded Notre Dame Academy did all its scoring (including a hat trick by Lindsay Wilson) after halftime in a 4-0 win in the Round-of-32.

The Cougars (14-2-3) will host No. 13 Medfield (10-6-3) in the Round-of-16 on Thursday at 5 p.m. NDA is 9-0-2 since a 2-1 loss to Natick on Sept. 28 and rightly considers itself a legitimate threat to go all the way.

"Our schedule this year was a lot more competitive" than last year, said Sydney Comeau, a junior from Pembroke who had NDA's other goal. "That really made us ready and tested us, so we are prepared for the playoffs. Everyone is so competitive in practices and games and wants this so bad. We know we have the potential."

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Whitman-Hanson, meanwhile, had to be satisfied with a spirited first-half effort that forced NDA coach Kelly Turner into some tactical adjustments that paid dividends over the final 40 minutes.

"I'm very proud of the way our kids battled," Panthers coach David Floeck said. "We're a little bit young and inexperienced (with only two healthy seniors – Madelyn Allen and Ella Nagle), but they fought hard and we were happy to be zero-zero at half. We know the firepower that Notre Dame has since we played them earlier in the season (in a 2-1 loss on Oct. 1)."

In one last nod to the theme of the season, the Panthers suffered a double injury blow on the eve of this game.

"We had some adversity coming into the season and then two more starters were out today ‒ one broke her arm yesterday and one got hurt in gym class today," Floeck said. "But that's no excuse. Notre Dame is a good team. They're a more talented team than we are right now."

Asked if he had ever seen anything like the rash of injuries Whitman-Hanson endured this season, Floeck said, "Never in my career. But it's not about the kids who couldn't play. It was really about the kids who came out here and competed."

Whitman-Hanson (4-11-5) was winless in October (0-7-4), scoring just six goals over that span, but Floeck's crew perked up in the preliminary round, hammering No. 36 Amherst-Pelham, 6-0, behind goals from Makenna Marshall, Kennedy Frazier, Anna Schnabel, Elizabeth Kowlski, Olivia Godwin and Nagle.

That turned out to be the Panthers' last hurrah, and Floeck said it gave his team a bit of a boost coming into the NDA match.

"I thought we competed well and played well (in the prelims) and I thought that helped us coming into this game," he noted.

Whitman-Hanson didn't generate much offense over the first 40 minutes, but despite being bottled up in their defensive half, the defending champs didn't crack. NDA really only had one clean look at the net, and goalkeeper Ava Patete came up big by denying Comeau from point-blank range.

"I was nervous," Turner said of the 0-0 halftime score. "I felt like they were really defending us well and they had a game plan to shut down Sydney. She was double- and triple-teamed in the middle of the field. I thought our offense and midfield weren't really clicking. We weren't solving the problem.

"It's hard to play when the other team is all defensive and packed in. I think we were frustrated. They had to turn it on and they had to win 50-50 balls and do the work to get the ball on the ground because Whitman-Hanson kept serving it long and high and we don't like to play that way. We had to pull it back to our possession game and really turn it on."

Turner made three halftime adjustments: 1) pushing Comeau (usually a center forward) out wide to get her away from the congested middle of the field; 2) moving Wilson up to center forward from her usual center midfield role to add some punch up top; and 3) temporarily moving back Lola Paradis up to midfield to fill in for Wilson.

"(Whitman-Hanson) made me change things up," Turner said. "The regular stuff (wasn't working). I wasn't going to wait. I went to a more offensive strategy. Having Lindsay and Sydney up top together is really tough to defend."

The moves worked as Wilson, rampaging down the left wing, struck five minutes into the second half and then doubled the lead five minutes later. The first goal came off a looping shot; Patete got a hand on the ball but could not prevent it from tumbling inside the far post. On the second goal, Wilson blasted a shot under the crossbar from close range on the left side of the box.

"Oh, my gosh, she was incredible," Comeau said. "When she's on fire I feel like it lifts up the whole team."

Comeau made it 3-0 with 15 minutes remaining, and Wilson completed her hat trick less than a minute later. By her count she has 17 goals on the season now.

"It was the first tournament game," Wilson said of NDA's slow start. "We had some nerves coming into it. In the second half we knew we needed to step it up."

Whitman-Hanson can focus on getting healthy in the offseason. The Panthers figure to bounce back in 2023 with Patete back in the net and Marshall (8 goals, 5 assists for a team-high 13 points) anchoring the midfield again.

"She does a little bit of everything," Floeck said of Marshall. "Her skills and leadership have been tremendous. We're psyched to have her back."

Meanwhile, NDA will turn its attention to Medfield, which plays a possession-based game that Turner thinks will be a better matchup for the Cougars than Whitman-Hanson's long-ball approach.

"We're much better against that," she said. "Medfield likes to play to feet and build out of the back. I'm kind of excited to play a team that's more similar to our style."

This article originally appeared on The Patriot Ledger: No repeat for Whitman-Hanson girls soccer as NDA prevails in Div. 2