The start was just right for the Concord girls’ soccer team. The Crimson Tide scored in the ninth minute of Friday’s season opener against Winnacunnet and pushed it to a comfortable three-goal margin late in the first half.
But the Warriors converted a Concord mistake into a goal just before halftime, scored twice in the opening six minutes of the second half and eventually found a 4-3 win at Memorial Field.
“I thought it was pretty gutsy, especially in the second half,” Winnacunnet Coach Nick O’Brien said. “Concord is a very good team, traditionally they’re one of the top five or six teams in the state, so this is a good win for us.”
And it was a tough loss for the Tide, but Jeremy DuClos, who is in his first year back as the team’s head coach after holding the job from 2008-10, was doing his best to keep things positive.
“I started (the postgame team meeting) by talking about the first half because we had an excellent first 40 minutes,” DuClos said. “Unfortunately, the second half got away from us. We gave up those two early goals and that shook us out of our rhythm.”
Concord played with some nerves for the first few minutes of the game, giving up a couple chances to the Warriors, but the Tide found itself in short order.
Sophomore Nicole Toler began the first scoring play, battling for a 50-50 ball on the right wing and sending a cross into the top of the box. That’s where senior captain Ellie Pope gathered the ball, took her time and placed a shot into the bottom left corner for a 1-0 lead in the ninth minute.
Concord keeper Stephanie Oberg (five saves) kept the score there when she came off her line with a well-timed tackle to stop speedy Winnacunnet striker Meg Dzialo after she had gotten behind the defense.
The Tide doubled their advantage with 10:48 left in the first half. Sophomore Grace Devanny used her eye-popping pace to catch, and then pass, a defender as the two chased down a ball. Once Devanny got there, she put a move on Warriors keeper Emily Parks and slid the ball into the net for a 2-0 lead.
Four minutes later, a Devanny assist helped make it 3-0. She played a square pass to freshman Allison Silverstein, a pretty feed that was only bested by Silverstein’s shot, a picture-perfect ball into the upper left corner.
The Tide had all the momentum at that point and looked in complete control, but a momentary lapse of concentration changed that. An errant Concord pass led to a breakaway for Dzialo, who took advantage of the opportunity and made it 3-1 with 4:10 left in the half.
“I’ll be honest, that goal was against the run of play,” O’Brien said. “We were struggling and once we put that in, things seemed to shift from there. And then we had a little talk at halftime and credit to the girls, they came out at the beginning of that second half and played well.”
Despite giving up that late goal, the Tide was feeling good at halftime, too.
“You never want to give up a goal going into halftime, but we had a 3-1 lead and I think we had several opportunities beyond the three goals that we didn’t get, so the girls were confident,” DuClos said. “They felt like they had a solid grasp on the game.”
That grasp started to slip quickly once the second half began, as did the Tide’s man marking.
The two goals Winnacunnet netted in the first six minutes of the second half followed the same script – a corner kick fell in the box and an open Warrior had the time and space to put it home. The first of those two goals came off the foot of Caitlin Trott in the 42nd minute and the second came from Hannah Driscoll in the 46th minute to make it 3-3.
Concord responded with sustained possession in their own end, and the Tide had a 7-4 shot advantage in the second half (15-8 for the game). But the home team wasn’t as fluid as it was in the first half, and most of those shots came from distance and never truly threatened.
“We were getting looks in the second half, but I think we lost the team chemistry and composure,” DuClos said. “We weren’t connecting passes the way we were in the first half. So we were statistically getting shots, we were statistically controlling some possession, but we didn’t have the same cohesive flow.”
After Concord’s sustained possession, Winnacunnet once again scored against the run of play. This one was the Warriors best goal as Caroline Meuse played a perfectly weighted through ball to Claire Gourgeot, who slotted it into the right corner with 21:29 left on the clock.
The Tide earned three corner kicks in the final 14 minutes, and had more possession, but couldn’t come up with the equalizer.
“We had some fabulous moments in the first half with ball movement and composure, and in the second half we lost that a little bit,” DuClos said. “It’s a work in progress.”
(Tim O’Sullivan can be reached at 369-3341 or at tosullivan@cmonitor.com or on Twitter @timosullivan20.)