MONMOUTH — The Monmouth girls’ soccer team scored 73 goals in 14 regular season games — a stunning 5.21 goals-per-game clip.
At halftime of the Mustangs’ Class C South quarterfinal contest against the Wiscasset on Wednesday, they were below their average. But in the second half, they more than made up for it, wearing down the Wolverines and scoring seven times en route to a 9-1 victory.
“I’m on them all the time,” Monmouth coach Gary Trafton said. “I am always harping on getting better and better. You can’t stay still. These girls have you can’t take it for granted. I am always on them looking for perfection. It’s pretty hard to get perfection. We need to work on our little things that will get us better.”
The Fletcher sisters combined for six goals — freshman Audrey had four and senior Haley had two. Tia Day also had a pair of goals, while Emily Grandahl had a single marker.
The Wolverines gave the Mustangs a good opening half, limiting Monmouth to two goals. Audrey Fletcher recorded her his first goal at the 9:36 mark of the opening half, while Day made it 2-0 nine minutes later.
Wiscasset settled into the game after a strategic change.
“We actually changed up our formation after we were down two goals,” Wiscasset Duane Goud said. “We were hoping to come in and play a defensive game and hold them to nothing as long as we could. They got a couple of goals and we went back to our original formation.”
It took nearly 14 minutes in the second half before Monmouth scored again. Audrey Fletcher made it 3-0.
The goal barrage came in a six-minute span. The Mustangs (14-1-0) were awarded an indirect kick in the box and Grandahl booted the ball into the goal after a teammate tapped it to put it in play. Day scored to make it 5-0 before Audrey Fletcher got the hat trick goal to make it 6-0.
“I really think we came out really good (in the second half),” Audrey Fletcher said. “They played really hard in the first half, I do think that. We played harder and better in the second half than they did.”
Wiscasset (7-7-2) finally got on the board when Gabby Chapman converted on a penalty kick.
“I am proud of all my girls,” Goud said. “We had a good senior crew and we have a good freshmen crew that stepped up this year and played very hard.”
The Fletcher sisters capped the scoring with three goals. Haley scored back-to-back goals to make it 8-1. Audrey put up the ninth goal with fewer than six minutes to play.
Monmouth will now face Waynflete in the regional semifinal round. The Flyers toppled Lisbon on Wednesday, 2-0. The teams don’t meet in the regular season, but there is recent history between Monmouth and Waynflete: The two teams met in last year’s regional final, which the Flyers won, 3-2 in overtime.
“We’ve played Lisbon a quite a few times and we played Waynflete last year, they are the team that knocked us out,” Haley Fletcher said. “I think if we play them, that’s going to be pretty exciting to get to do that all over again. Hopefully it will be a different (result).”
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