Published: 5/2/2022 8:15:20 PM
Modified: 5/2/2022 8:13:47 PM
SOUTH HADLEY — While visiting Belchertown found the twine first in a Monday matchup against South Hadley, the Tigers didn’t let the early offense rattle them.
South Hadley picked up its fifth win of the season, cruising to victory in a dominant 23-8 performance. Gabi Moroney was electric for the Tigers, finishing with nine points (6G, 3A) while netminder Evelyn Gingras made 11 saves in net for the win.
While South Hadley’s offense received most of the spotlight with 23 goals (deservedly so), South Hadley head coach Brooke Marion was most pleased with the little things her team did well. That included the likes of winning ground balls and draw controls.
“Draw controls were huge. We've been struggling with winning 50-50 draw controls and today we definitely came out and won the majority of them which was the ultimate goal,” Marion said. “Whoever wins the game (usually) has the most draw controls.”
After Michelle Zaluga and Sam Pacunas struck to make it 2-1 Belchertown (Emily Piligian scored in between their tallies for South Hadley), the Tigers’ defense settled down and started communicating better, which was the catalyst for a bundle of forced turnovers and possession time.
“We just had to start talking on defense and kind of get into it a little bit,” Moroney said. “We just started off a little slow, and then once we started figuring out how to slide and everybody was communicating and had their person, it started coming together.”
In contrast, communication turned out to be Belchertown’s downfall. Despite the early back-and-forth, the Orioles struggled to keep up offensively and couldn’t keep the Tigers away from the ball as much as they wanted. After the score sat 7-3 with 9:15 left in the first half, South Hadley rattled off nine unanswered goals, broken only by a late goal from Paige Magner to make it 15-4 going into halftime.
The lack of communication hasn’t always been a problem for the Orioles – in their recent 21-15 win over Pope Francis, it was one of their biggest strengths.
“I was not happy with that today. That's something that we've been working on all season and against Pope the other day, it was fantastic. It was the best I've ever seen them communicate,” Belchertown head coach Chelsea Davis said. “So a little disappointed with the dip in that today.”
Even if the Orioles had been communicating well, they might have had their hands full with the depth in South Hadley’s lineup. Eleven different players got on the board Monday, and nine of them had multi-point games. Besides Moroney’s six goals, two other players finished with hat tricks – Catlien Dean (3G, 1A) and Margaret Watkins (4G, 3A). Olivia Marion dished out three assists and two goals, while Raquel Losty (2G, 1A) and Piligian (2G) each netted a pair of goals.
“Everybody's capable of scoring, which is huge,” Marion said. “Nobody's really the lead scorer, so it's good to have threats from all angles.”
In addition, Belchertown was playing without its starting goalie. Instead, the pair of Karlie Monteiro and Jordyn Hunter split time in net, even though neither had ever donned the goalie helmet before.
“I think they did a fantastic job. All I did was ask them to go in there and give it a shot. It's never fun being a goalie because everybody looks at you for goals being scored. So I just asked them to go in there and give their best and I think both of them did that,” Davis said. “I think it's hard to not know the fundamentals and go in and play a position without knowing that.”