FARMINGDALE — Was Monday night’s regular-season finale a statement game for the Hall-Dale girls soccer team?
“Yes,” said Bulldog senior Hayden Madore.
The result matched Madore’s emphatic declaration, with Hall-Dale capping the campaign with a 4-0 thumping of longtime Mountain Valley Conference rival Monmouth/Winthrop. Junior Julia Nott netted a pair of goals in the victory, sandwiched between strikes from classmate Violet Clark and freshman Fiona Breslin.
The victory for Hall-Dale (10-4-0) was significant not only as the regular-season capper, but also because the Bulldogs and Mustangs are locked into a second showdown next week in the Class C South quarterfinals as the No. 4 and No. 5 seeds in the region, respectively.
Hall-Dale hasn’t lost in regulation time since a 1-0 loss to Maranacook on Sept. 27.
“Coming into this game, we were really fired up and wanted to just dominate the whole entire game and get ahead quick,” Madore said. “Last year, when (Monmouth) came here we beat them 6-0, so it was like let’s do it again. This was also for MVCs, and now we get to play them again next week here. It’s a huge advantage to have that game here.”
Madore was outstanding in Monday’s match, directing one-way traffic for virtually the entire 80 minutes toward the Monmouth/Winthrop (8-5-1) end of the pitch.
Madore may not have hit the scoresheet, but the same could be said for other Bulldogs, as well. Marie Benoit set up Nott’s first goal with a left-footed cross for a 2-0 lead with just over 10 minutes remaining in the first half, but did not register another point.
Part of Hall-Dale’s success this season, Madore said, has to do with its many options in front of goal.
“It makes it easy and not easy,” Madore said. “Everyone deserves minutes and everyone can play, but it’s just a matter of match-ups and quickness and all of that.”
“It’s good to have different people starting, It’s all about those matchups,” Nott said. “It’s nice to have that kind of availability.”
For Monmouth, the loss marked the team’s third straight defeat as the Mustangs went 0-3-1 to complete their season after a six-game winning streak.
If there’s solace in the winless drought, it comes in the fact that the losses came against North Yarmouth (No. 1), Maranacook (No. 2) and Hall-Dale — three of the top four teams in the region’s Heal point standings.
“I’m not a happy camper,” Monmouth coach Gary Trafton said. “The first two goals — two shots, two goals. Two mistakes. You can’t give a good team that can shoot and score quality shots like that. Against the higher echelon teams, we’ve had a hard time and let down a little bit.”
Nott finished off her brace in the 46th minute, crashing the net to crack home the long rebound of Madore’s low 25-yard bullet.
“I feel like I score a lot of the goals by following up on the goalie. It’s easy, but it works,” said Nott, who made the switch back to her natural position at striker this season. “I didn’t start the season as a striker, but it feels really good to be back up there.”
Breslin’s first career goal put the game away in the 73rd minute.
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