On Monday night, the Silver Lake High girls’ soccer team started off their postseason campaign with a strong home win in the first round of the Division 2 South playoff bracket.
The Lakers, who had a lot of momentum granted the immense success they enjoyed for much of the regular season had one of their best games of the season as they shut down Dartmouth, 4-0. With the win, the Lakers improved to 15-4-1 on the season and advanced the their section’s quarterfinal against Notre Dame Academy.
The first half of the game was tightly contested since Dartmouth’s defense and goalkeeping were sharp. Due to this limitation, the Lakers were limited to one goal in the first half. This score came from Morgan Wohlgemuth off a strong pass from Melanie Coughlin. Other than that, however, the game was close in the first half. It also stayed that way for the first 15 minutes of the second half before the Lakers broke out.
With 25 minutes left in the contest, Hannah Vogt doubled the Lakers’ lead with her first of two goals of the game. Just a few minutes later, Holly Reeder-Morning scored her first goal of the game to put her team up by three, and Vogt kicked in the team’s final goal of the game with four minutes left.
Allie Crawford had four assists while Caity Smith had a strong performance in net. Smith earned the shutout in the win.
A major reason why the Lakers have enjoyed so much success this season is because they are such an experienced team. They have 13 seniors on their roster.
In order to prepare for the postseason, it helped the Lakers that they played some tough Patriot League competition during the regular season. They faced the likes of Duxbury, Hingham and Whitman-Hanson, all of whom made the postseason.