Boy’s soccer was shutout by Northern Burlington on Tuesday, 1-0, despite outshooting the Greyhounds and dominating most of the game on both sides of the ball. The Pirates responded on Thursday with a five-goal outburst to defeat Pennsauken 5-2 on senior night under the lights to move to 6-3-1.
“You have to play every possession like it is live or die,” head coach Jay Meile said. “That’s kind of what Northern did to us. We just relaxed. One of our sayings is, ‘play all 80 minutes.’ We’re a dangerous team that can make some noise in the playoffs.”
Of the five goals tonight, four of them were scored by seniors. Pat McCarthy had two, Mason Stepnowski had one and Sampson Abah had one. The fifth goal was scored by junior Ryan Mahaffy.
“With 11 seniors, they do such a nice job of working together and picking each other up,” Meile said.
Stepnowski got the scoring started less than two minutes into the game when he fired a laser of a shot from the right side past goalie Aaron Chester for the 1-0 lead.
“Last game we played them, it was 2-1 in overtime,” Stepnowski said. “We knew we had to come out shooting, scoring goals to get the pressure up.”
Pennsauken tied the game eight minutes later, beating Pirates starting keeper Tim Meissgeier. Then, just over one minute later, the Indians took their first and only lead of the game at 2-1.
“Teamwork tonight was key,” Meile said. “As you saw, none of our goals were solo efforts. It wasn’t just a one-v-one situation. When our non-goal scorers have the mindset to help create something, we are dangerous, but we have to consistently have that mindset.”
McCarthy didn’t want to be outdone by his senior teammates, so he tied the game at two with 27:09 left to play in the first half. He added his second goal of the night with 16:02 left to put the Pirates ahead for good.
“We’ve got a lot of heart and our defense is very good,” Stepnowski said. “We’ve got five guys in the back who can play very well. We’re also confident that we can put a bunch of goals in, so we are never down.”
Cinnaminson expanded the lead to 4-2 at the half with a goal from Mahaffy. Then, in the second half Abah iced it for the Pirates only eight minutes in to make it 5-2.
“We didn’t play a complete game tonight,” Meile said. “There was a span of 15 minutes or so that we still need to close.”
“Mike Reid is usually one of our first subs on the field, but the last two games he has started and hasn’t come off the field. Tonight I was able to get him a 10-12 minute break. We need the next guy to fill Mike’s spot as that spark to close the 15 minutes of play. You have to get role players that come in and lift the team up in some way.”
Boy’s soccer returns to the field on Saturday, October 10 at 10am when the squad visits Bordentown.
