Girls soccer: South Hadley stays perfect, rallies to beat Hampshire Regional, 3-1

SOUTH HADLEY — The South Hadley girls soccer team fell behind early against Hampshire Regional on Monday, but came out strong in the second half to beat the Raiders, 3-1.

Less than one minute into the game, Olivia Aldrich crossed the ball into the middle of Hampshire’s attacking zone, Sophie Aldrich settled the ball and fired it to the back of the net for Hampshire’s only goal.

“They took us by surprise at first,” South Hadley coach Rich Marjanski said. “But as soon as we started getting our flow and our passing, and the girls just needed to relax a little bit, you knew the shots would come, and that’s what we started doing.”

Maddie Doolittle tied the game at 1-1 just before halftime as South Hadley stayed undefeated (10-0).

“We needed to start passing the ball to the outside more so we created more width in the field and that way we were able to get crosses and corner kicks and everything that allowed us to score goals,” Doolittle said.

Hampshire fell to 8-2-1 with the loss.

“South Hadley is a tough team,” Hampshire coach Steve Croft said. “We strive to have a good warmup, and we started strong, but then obviously we were not going to the ball, we need to play a lot better.”

After the Raiders took an early lead, they could not slow down South Hadley’s offense.

The Tigers’ first goal came off of a free kick from just outside the box in their attacking third. Lindsay Marjanski fired the kick above Hampshire goalie Katherine Taylor, who was able to make a save, but the rebound was gathered by Doolittle, who tied the game 1-1 going into halftime.

South Hadley controlled the pace of the game during the second half and scored two goals to secure the win.

Lindsay Marjanski broke the tie with an assist from her sister Paige in the 48th minute.

Blaney sealed the win with the final goal off a corner kick by Doolittle with less than 10 minutes remaining.

South Hadley goalie Bridget Sears made five saves. Taylor made 15 saves for Hampshire.

Hampshire struggled in the second half with few shots on goal.

“I think we started off slow … but I feel like in the second half we started getting our groove, connecting passes like we should be,” Doolittle said. “We kept up the intensity and we were able to get it back.”