Lever popped a pair of rebound goals into the cage, one in each half, to lead Edward Little to a 3-0 road win over rival Lewiston at the Franklin Athletic Complex.
“It’s her job, really, to get the ball inside,” EL coach Greg Perkins said. “Today we made a couple changes because of where the ball went, and she ended up inside and she scored a couple. She’s usually really effective getting the ball up the sideline and getting the ball in front for scoring opportunities.”
This time, Lever earned the opportunities herself.
“We all work together on offense,” Lever said. “Usually I’m coming up the right side, as the right wing I bring the ball down and find the people in the center. But in certain circumstances, you have to kind of shift so that you play to where the ball is. If the center takes it to the right, you have to fill in the middle.”
Through the midfield, Lever and her teammates gave the Blue Devils (0-3) fits through the first half, barely allowing the home team to reach the Eddies’ circle in front of keeper Karli Stubbs.
“We just try to block off the holes through the middle,” Lever said. “We do a lot of intercepting drills. In fact, that’s probably what we work on the most, lately at least. We’re just trying to cut off those passes to the middle and the right side.”
“We have played really well, preseason and the first two games, between the 25s,” Perkins said. “We’ve had some defensive lapses in our circle, and some scoring problems in the offensive circle, but we’ve really controlled 25 to 25.”
That dominance in the middle led to a 14-5 advantage in shots, and a 7-2 advantage in penalty corners, in the opening half. Thanks to goals from Lever and Oceanna Chamberlain, EL also had a 2-0 advantage on the scoreboard.
“When we resort to what we’re familiar with, and to what we’ve done before, we get these kinds of results,” Lewiston coach Randy Richardson said. “When we do what we’re learning to do differently, and better, the results are better.”
To that end, Lewiston reversed its fortunes in the second half, spending a lot more time in the Edward Little end and generating twice as many corner chances — 6-3 — as the Eddies.
“I think we were so much more aggressive,” Lewiston’s Maggie Phelan said.
“Running the sidelines, getting it up and getting it into the circle,” teammate Tamica Conner added, “That’s what we needed to do.”
Stubbs was solid in the cage when she had to be, though, finishing with nine saves. Lewiston keeper Kaylyn Labonte turned back 19.
“I thought we did some things better today than we did against Oxford Hills,” Perkins said. “Lewiston always plays tough, they had some nice breakaways on us. Defensively, Karli stepped up big again because we had trouble getting back on transition sometimes.”
Lever capped the scoring with 5:56 to play on a third chance rebound to Labonte’s left, just after the Lewiston keeper made a diving stop from her stomach in a dusty, goalmouth scrum.
“I think even as the right forward I lack offensively sometimes,” Lever said. “Any goal in any game is good for me.”
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