Spartans reach finals before losing to Belchertown

WESTFIELD – In the past two seasons, the Monument Mountain boys’ soccer team has reached the quarterfinals and semifinals of the Western Massachusetts tournament. This season was just another step.

“It’s been baby steps trying to get here with these guys,” said Head Coach Matt Naventi, whose team reached the finals last Sunday. “I am really proud of these six seniors.”

The Spartans, after beating South Hadley 1-0 last Friday night in the Western Massachusetts semi-finals, fell to Belchertown (19-0) 1-0 in the finals at Westfield State.

The culprit was the Orioles’ star midfielder Alex DeSantis, who scored with 48 seconds left to end the Spartan’s championship hopes.

“[We] really did a solid job defensively – we limited [DeSantis’] opportunities – we gave him a couple of looks, [but] I was pretty satisfied with those looks,” Naventi said. “We couldn’t put together anything offensively.”

Against South Hadley, the Spartans utilized great mid-field passing to draw South Hadley’s defensive backline up, leading to a great pass from the wing by Sam Plishtin to leading scorer Nick Maseiro, who fired a rocket with his right-foot in the left corner of the net for the winning goal.

In the finals, Belchertown was aggressive in the midfield challenging every ball, and keeping an extra-defender behind the defensive line (sweeper) that eliminated every chance Maseiro had to score.

“[We tried] to have Lucas [Wartella] hold the ball and they put enough pressure on him where he took either a bad first touch or pressured where [we] couldn’t play a ball through the midfielders – they shut us down,” Naventi said.

The Orioles were led by their 6’3” goalie Zach Parsons, who came aggressively out of the net to knock down Bobby Kinne’s long throw-ins from the corners.

Parsons (five saves) came up big with seven seconds left, when Wartella had a chance to tie the game but couldn’t find the room to get off a good shot against the Orioles’ star goalie.

Belchertown had beaten the Spartans earlier in Great Barrington, 2-1, with Monument Mountain losing out on a potential game-tying goal late on a referee miscue.

On Sunday, the Spartans had no answer for the Orioles team speed on the outside on the quick turf of Westfield State, despite having both Cam Powell and Jamie Waterman this time around against Belchertown.

“(Belchertown) had great outside midfielders – both DeSantis and Chris Riel really put a lot of pressure on us – DeSantis got by us with a couple of touches, unfortunately,” said defender Bobby Kinne. “We are a little disappointed with what happened right here.”

Despite losing senior tri-captains Ian Akers, Chris Peretti, Maseiro and goalie Aaron House, along with fellow seniors Eitan Kiin and Curt Rathbun – the Spartans should continue to progress under Naventi’s system and be right back at Westfield State next year.

“It’s a step in the right direction,” Naventi said.

Posted by Tim Davis on November 15, 2012. Filed under High School Sports,Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry