LEOMINSTER – Look around the Belchertown boys soccer bench for a star, and you’ll find them in spades. The squad has plenty of top tier talent to choose from, and that was all on display Wednesday night as the Orioles shut out No. 5 Cardinal Spellman, 5-0, in the MIAA Division 3 semifinals to punch their ticket to Saturday’s state final.
Top-seeded Belchertown will face No. 3 Norwell on Saturday at noon in the final, set to be played at Medway High School.
The Orioles came out firing in the first half, scoring four of their five goals in the opening 40 minutes and not giving the Cardinals any time or space to get going offensively.
“These guys understand that if we can get on them early, we can change their pace of play and stay there and do what we want to do defensively,” Belchertown head coach Zach Siano said of his team’s fast start. “Then (we can) link up our play through our midfield, which tends to be our strength at this level.”
That midfield kept Cardinal Spellman on its heels all game, with the Cardinals only getting one solid chance on net 18 minutes into the first half, a screamer of a shot that goalie Jacob Chaisson may have gotten a hand on before it hit the crossbar.
Between that and the back line, led primarily by co-captains Hunter LePage and Grayson Marques, and with Chiasson as the final line of defense, it’s been all but impossible for any of their opponents to break through this postseason.
“I think Hunter and Grayson are amazing, combined with all the outside backs that we have, and with Jacob, who I think is one of the best goalies around – I think it’s a combination of that,” Belchertown’s Joe Bianco said of his team’s defensive success. “And we’ve been playing together for so long now, I think the gel and the chemistry has really made us a defensive force.”
The rest of the game put Belchertown’s offense on full display, with the Orioles scoring by committee in the win. Five different players put the ball in the net, with Bianco, Jack Holt, Shay O’Neill, Nicholas Adzima and Aiden Torna all tallying goals, and Nathaniel Oldenburg picking up an assist.
“We needed to keep working the ball around, find a change on the point of attack, and you know, I don’t care who ends up on the stat sheet as long as it’s us on the right side of it,” Siano said. “So those guys know to be unselfish. They’ll trust one another, one through 27 here.”
The Orioles struck first in the sixth minute of the opening half, a clean shot from Bianco off a pass from Oldenburg.
Just seven minutes later, Belchertown doubled its lead when Holt came in to pick up a stray ball that was lying in front of an open net after an earlier chance took Spellman keeper Tristan McDonough out of the play.
In the 24th minute, Holt flashed a couple of jaw-dropping moves to avoid multiple Cardinal Spellman defenders on the left side before sending a rocket of a cross in the middle of the slot, where O’Neill found an open net to make it 3-0 Belchertown.
The Orioles had a couple of other chances that went just wide, sending one ball over the crossbar and a couple wide, but Adzima gave the Orioles an insurance goal with five minutes remaining in the first half off a throw-in play.
Six of the team’s current members were sophomores when the Orioles won the state title back in 2019, and even those who don’t have a title yet have slid easily into Belchertown’s lineup. But regardless of who starts, Siano is just happy to finally have a chance to defend the program’s state title after the COVID-19 pandemic didn’t allow them to in 2020.
“This is great that we can go back and defend our state championship that sadly was taken away from us and you know, every other team in Massachusetts in 2020. To go in as a defending state champion really probably means nothing to anyone but our program,” Siano said. “For the most part we’ve had to kind of rebuild ourselves from then. So to see this program have a chance to defend our title is a welcomed sight.”