by Dakota Antelman
A season that regularly featured high scoring games ended Thursday afternoon when a weary Hawk boys soccer team failed to muster a single goal in what would go down as a crushing 5-0 defeat at the hands of Westborough.
The Hawks had little by way of substitutions. They started two underclassmen and relied on a group of mostly freshman and sophomore substitutes during the game. In contrast, the Westborough Rangers rotated through a deep roster. By Coach John Heliar’s count, 21 Rangers players took the field at at least one point during the game.
“We’re very deep,” Heliar said. “We just have more numbers. We have fresher legs, and I think when we started to bring people in, that second group, we were just a little bit fresher than what Hudson had.”
Hudson and Westborough, teams who played each other twice during the regular season, matched each other’s moves for much of the first half. The Hawks had success sending strikers Mike Conley and Will King out along the sidelines, just as they were able to bail themselves out when playing defense close to their own goal.
Westborough broke the game open with 6:27 left in the first half, however, when Spencer Nagi found himself alone in front of the Hudson net. The Rangers top scorer this year was able to hammer the point-blank shot past a diving Mark Almeida for the 1-0 lead.
Hudson struggled to regroup after Westborough’s first goal and, in fact, found themselves in a similar situation just 90 seconds later. That time, it was David Lineres busting past the defense to score on a frustrated Almeida.
“I thought the second goal was my fault,” said Hudson’s Kyle Andrade. “So obviously my bad. That was very emotional for me. That may have cost us the season.”
The Hawks made it to half time down 2-0. The game was not over yet. However, as the second half began, the Hawks are unanimous in saying that their hope quickly faded. Thomas VanDerVellen scored just 44 seconds into the half, to put Westborough up 3-0.
“We were passing really efficiently [in the first half],” Andrade said. “Calming the ball down. But after they scored the second goal, we started giving up. After that third goal right at the beginning of the second half, we all assumed that the game was over.”
Westborough would score twice more before the game ended. Before long, however, Andrade says the focus was no longer on the score.
Shortly after the VanDerVellen goal, Almeida, who had already suffered a knee injury earlier this season, left the game with an apparent head injury. He was kicked in the head while diving for the ball during a corner kick and had to be helped off the field by Hawk trainers and coaches.
“It made us want to end the game,” Andrade said. “No one else wants to get hurt. It’s better that the game ended as fast as it did.”
Meanwhile, fouls accumulated for Hudson. Two Hawks were benched in the second half following yellow cards, both coming as a result of illegal contact. Regardless, the Rangers did not retaliate, a testament, Heliar said, to his team’s experience in dealing with situations like the one on Thursday afternoon.
“They [Hudson] are used to scoring goals and putting the ball in the net,” Heliar said. “We prevented them from doing that today, and that frustrated them. Our guys have had experience this season doing this to teams. They were able to follow through and not retaliate.”
With the final whistle, the 11 win season of the boys soccer team came to a close. Bolstered by the standout performances of a central group of seniors during the regular season, the Hawks could not overcome the depth of the Rangers team they faced in the postseason.
“We didn’t even have a complete roster this time,” Hawks Head Coach Dimitry Markonidis said. “We’re still missing like three or four players from the beginning of the season. But with the team we have, it’s hard to come back when the other team scores first.”
Regardless of Thursday’s outcome, however, Markonidis said there is hope for the future of the Hudson High School soccer program.
“You never know with high school,” he said. “It depends on who shows up. But we have a young team, so I believe in a couple years, it’s going to be way better.”
