SOUTH HADLEY — The Tigers are hungry for another state title.
The third-seeded South Hadley girls soccer team sailed past No. 19 Uxbridge, 4-0, in its Round of 16 win in the Division 4 MIAA tournament despite gnarly weather conditions on Monday night, in a game the hosts controlled from the opening kickoff.
Four different Tigers potted goals, while Olivia Athas attained the shutout with four saves, as South Hadley moved one step closer to claiming another state championship after its thorough takedown of the visiting Spartans.
“We talk about finishing, especially this time of the year, the most important thing is finishing,” South Hadley head coach Rich Marjanski said. “We talk in detail about that. We missed a few early. I stress to the girls all the time, good teams put people away. When you get those chances you just got to bury them. We stepped up in the first half and buried a few of them, which was good.”
The Tigers won their one and only state championship in program history in 2019. Four years later, South Hadley lost in the state final to Sutton in 2023.
Less than five minutes into Monday’s meeting, South Hadley executed a beautiful corner-kick with the ball ending up in the back of Uxbridge’s net to quickly assume the 1-0 lead. Cara Dean headed in a boot from Ally Fleury from the left corner flag to put the Spartans on their heels early.
The Tigers generated several high-danger scoring chances following Dean’s opening tally, but couldn’t add on to their lead until fewer than 10 minutes remained in the first half.
Hannah Haesaert finally broke through once the speedy sophomore sprung loose for a breakaway after chasing down a through ball up the middle of the pitch and sent a left-footer into the mesh with nine minutes, 58 seconds showing on the scoreboard.
Ahead 2-0, South Hadley scored twice more before the midway point, once from Kiana Ramos and another on a Regan Masse rebound marker, to take the reins at 4-0.
“We have a couple good scorers on our team, but a lot of people distribute and step up and find their little spots and poke things in,” Marjanski said. “I told them, it only takes a toe to go in if you’re in the right spot. It doesn’t have to be pretty, especially this time of year.”
The Tigers predicate a large portion of their offense around earning corners and set pieces and Monday’s victory was no different. For instance, if South Hadley has ball-position by the sidelines in the offensive end, it’ll carry the ball as close to the endline as possible and then fire a shot toward the net, with the intention of the ball bouncing off a defender’s body and out of bounds, thereby awarding the Tigers a corner kick.
Although South Hadley only scored one of its four goals from those situations versus Uxbridge, it had numerous looks throughout the 80-minute affair.
“We put in a lot of stuff throughout the year and we work on it daily at the end of practice, every-time situations and we got a few tricks up our sleeve,” Marjanski said. “It’s kind of fun to watch the girls perform in it.”
The Tigers eased off the gas in the second half as they appeared to be focused more on completing clean passes than racking up insurance goals. However, South Hadley still generated a handful of scoring chances during the final 40 minutes, but to no avail.
The victory sends the Tigers to the Round of 8, the same round their state tournament run came to an end a year ago. Hamilton-Wenham bested South Hadley in double overtime, 3-2.
This year, the Tigers will get to host No. 6 Littleton, a far cry from last season’s Round of 8 contest which was held at Gordon College in Wenham.
“Obviously the further you go, the stronger teams you have,” Marjanski said. “The upsets usually happen in the first couple rounds, but after that, the one, two, three, four seeds take over, a little bit.”
Monday’s defeat put an end to the Spartan’s special season as they managed an 12-win improvement from their forgettable, one-win 2024 campaign. Uxbridge’s final record read out to 13-6-2.
South Hadley (13-7-1) will next play on Thursday, Nov. 13 at 5 p.m.
