BELCHERTOWN – Jack Holt knew his best chance at a goal was the second ball.
The Belchertown boys soccer team lined up for a corner with 3 minutes, 37 seconds remaining in the first half. Holt backed out of the penalty box to observe. Shay O’Neill lofted the ball in, and it ricocheted skyward off a Dover-Sherborn player. Nicholas Adzima headed it down for the Orioles into open space.
Bingo. Holt raced to the ball and blasted it off the volley. His shot skipped in front of Raiders keeper Matt Charron, tumbled over him and into the net, giving the top-seeded Orioles a 1-0 home win over No. 17 Dover-Sherborn in the Division 3 state second round.
“I consider myself an experienced forward,” Holt said. “I knew if I laid off, the second ball would fall to me. That’s just what I do as a forward.”
Belchertown (16-1-4) will face No. 9 Greater New Bedford in the quarterfinals at 2 p.m. Saturday. The game will likely be played at Minnechaug or another turf field due to expected heavy rains Friday and into the weekend.
“I think it’s expected of us as a No. 1 seed, and I definitely think if we keep fighting, we can accomplish anything,” Holt said.
The goal capped a furious first half for Belchertown. The Orioles generated chance after chance, living in Dover-Sherborn’s end. Defenders Hunter LePage and Grayson Marques deftly handled long balls and quickly dispossessed Raiders attackers all night. Belchertown keeper Jacob Chaisson only needed to make two saves.
Dover-Sherborn’s only real chance of the first half came 12 minutes in after a long throw. The Orioles couldn’t clear it effectively. The Raiders hit the crossbar twice before eventually firing the ball over for a goal kick.
“That might be the best game I saw Hunter and Grayson play as a unit all season long,” Belchertown coach Zach Siano said. “As a unit, they played a clean game. They are doing what they need to do on their job, and now we need to finish it off in the final third.”
That last touch eluded the Orioles for the game’s first 36 minutes despite the chances they were creating.
“Every game we try and come out and put the game away early,” Holt said. “We didn’t put away as much as we could have in the first half. One is all you need sometimes.”
Belchertown created better chances in the first half than the second but never let up its pressure or effort. The Orioles wanted a second goal to put the game out of reach.
“I feel like we’ve let teams hang around, and I said after the game that we won a state title on a team that let us hang around,” Siano said. “We’re on the verge of letting some of these teams steal what’s ours, and that’s the state championship trophy, by letting these teams hang around. It’s not like we had clean looks we didn’t finish, but we had good looks that we probably should have put in the back of the net for some insurance.”
Dover-Sherborn gave itself the opportunity late. With the clock stopped showing two minutes and the referees keeping time on the field, Belchertown tried to pass the ball out of its end instead of a hard clearance in the air. The Raiders gained possession and forced the Orioles to concede a throw in. Dover-Sherborn throws were as good as corners for most of the night at generating scoring opportunities. That attempt caromed off an Oriole behind the net for a corner, another lifeline for Dover-Sherborn.
Belchertown didn’t mess around and launched the ball away the first opportunity it got, and the referee’s whistle ended the match shortly after.
“It was definitely scary, but we knew what we had to do – just mark our man and we were fine,” LePage said.
Kyle Grabowski can be reached at kgrabowski@gazettenet.com. Follow him on Twitter @kylegrbwsk.