HOLYOKE – South Hadley senior Sally Waite clutched the Western Massachusetts Class B championship trophy walking off the track.
“It’s home,” she said, displaying it for her gathering friends and family.
The No. 1 seeded Tigers had just defeated No. 2 Belchertown 4-1 on Wednesday to win their first sectional title since 2019. With the way the South Hadley girls soccer program has been humming lately, that qualifies as a drought.
The Tigers won three straight titles from 2017-2019 and added a state title that final season. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic wiped out the 2020 tournaments, and Belchertown rallied to beat South Hadley in last year’s final on a last second goal.
“Knowing we were playing Belchertown again, we wanted to take it back,” South Hadley’s Maddie Soderbaum said.
Lauren Marjanski poured in a hat trick to ensure the trophy headed across the Joseph E. Muller Bridge to South Hadley. She scored her first goal 13 minutes in on a pass from Soderbaum, leaving no doubt from distance.
“You give Lauren that much space, she’s going to make you pay,” Belchertown coach Kyle Thibault said. “You give her time and space like that, she’s going to kill any team.”
The Orioles weathered pressure for another 20 minutes before breaking out and earning a free kick. Ashley Cunningham lofted a ball from the 35-yard line over South Hadley’s defense and dropped it on Macie Bolton’s foot, who volleyed it first time into the net to knot the game at 1.
“Macie came up huge as a senior. Ashley made a great ball in,” Thibault said. “Macie was able to bury it. She’s come up big.”
The 1-1 scoreline held to halftime, but South Hadley pounced from the outset of the second half. The Tigers hit the crossbar early, and the ball rolled out for a corner.
Marjanski lofted the ball to the far post, where it dropped amidst a scrum. Soderbaum put her foot to it and gave South Hadley at 2-1 lead in the 43rd minute.
“The next goal was big, it was either us or them,” Marjanski said.
She put the game away with the next two, connecting with Jordyn Balint on a breakaway in the 67th minute and scoring a brilliant, long range goal after eluding several defenders on a run up the field in the final five minutes to complete the hat trick.
“Western Mass. – and I tell the girls this all the time – it’s such an honor to win Western Mass. It’s such a hard thing to do,” South Hadley coach Rich Marjanski said. “If you have a chance to do it in your four years while you’re in high school, that is a heck of an accomplishment. There’s some tough teams to get through.”
Now the Tigers will turn their attention to the state tournament as the No. 1 seed in Division 3. Belchertown will join them on the other side of that bracket as the No. 6 seed.
“I told them the new season starts (Thursday),” Thibault said.
Kyle Grabowski can be reached at kgrabowski@gazettenet.com. Follow him on Twitter @kylegrbwsk.