Trips to championships will be at stake on Wednesday for the boys’ soccer teams from Hopkinton and Bow and the girls’ volleyball team from Coe-Brown.
Hopkinton has a date with No. 3 Mascenic in the Division III semifinals at Bank of New Hampshire Stadium in Laconia at 4:30 p.m., Bow faces defending-champ ConVal in the D-II semifinals at Bill Ball Stadium in Exeter at 6:15 p.m., and Coe-Brown meets No. 2 Milford in the D-II volleyball semis at 5 p.m. at Pinkerton Academy in Derry.
Hopkinton has been to four of the last six D-III boys’ soccer finals, and Scott Zipke, now in his 14th year as the Hawks head coach, seems to have his team peaking for the playoffs once again. Hopkinton finished the regular season with three straight shutouts, outscoring its opponents 15-0 in that span, and then maintained the shutout streak with a 5-0 win against No. 11 Hillsboro-Deering in the first round.
Things got tighter in Saturday’s quarterfinals for the No. 7 Hawks (13-4-1) when they visited No. 2 Gilford. The Golden Eagles scored first, but Kevin Newton-Delgado found the tying goal late in the first half, and goalie Aiden Burns starred during the PK shootout as the Hawks escaped with a 2-1 win.
“Win and advance is the saying for tournament play, and that is what we are doing – by the skin of our teeth,” Zipke said after the quarterfinal win.
For Hopkinton or Mascenic (16-2-0), the season will end against the same team it started – the Hawks beat the Vikings, 4-2, in the season opener on Sept. 3.
The Bow vs. ConVal D-II semifinal is also a rematch, but this one is from the other end of the regular-season – the Falcons lost at ConVal, 3-0, on Oct. 25.
No. 5 Bow (11-4-3) shook off that loss with a 1-0 win in the first round against No. 12 Stevens, and then got three goals from Matt Ferland in a 4-0 result at No. 4 Milford in the quarterfinals that left Bow coach George Pinkham pleased with his team’s effort level.
“Thomas Alva Edison once said genius is one percent inspiration, 99 percent perspiration. We did sweat a lot today,” Pinkham said after the win.
Inventing a way to beat top-ranked ConVal (14-1-2) won’t be easy. The Cougars have lost only two games in the last two years and are allowing just 0.59 goals per game this season.
Like the Bow boys’ soccer team, the No. 6 Coe-Brown girls’ volleyball team will be trying to reverse a regular-season result when it faces No. 2 Milford, which beat the Bears, 3-1, on Sept. 27. This won’t be new for Coe-Brown – the Bears lost to John Stark during the regular season but then pulled off a 3-2 win against the No. 3 Generals.
“We had a plan headed into tonight’s match and the girls executed it out of the gate so well I couldn’t stop smiling,” Coe-Brown coach Renee Zobel said on Saturday after that quarterfinal win.
So far, the Bears have posted a 12-5 record in Zobel’s first year at the helm, and all five of those losses have come against top-four teams – No. 1 Gilford (twice), No. 2 Milford, No. 3 John Stark and No. 4 Oyster River. Milford, last year’s runner-up, has won 13 of its last 14 matches and dropped only four sets on those 13 wins.
On Thursday, the girls’ soccer teams from Concord and Bow will make final four appearances of their own.
No. 5 Concord will meet undefeated Exeter (17-0-0) in the D-I girls’ soccer semifinal at 6:15 p.m. at Stellos Stadium in Nashua. The Crimson Tide (14-4-0) beat No. 12 Manchester Memorial, 2-0, in the first-round and then pulled out a 2-1 win in PKs against No. 4 Bedford in the quarterfinals. Mary Martinson scored the Tide’s lone regulation goal against Bedford, assisted by Ashley Plante, while goalie Autumn Nudd stopped the Bulldogs’ last PK to secure a dramatic win.
“We had girls fighting through so many different injuries and fatigue,” Concord coach Phil Tuttle said of the quarterfinal match. “This was a tremendous victory for our team and our program.”
No. 3 Bow (15-2-0) will face No. 2 Hollis Brookline (14-1-2) at 4 p.m. in Exeter in the D-II girls’ soccer semifinals. The Falcons squeaked out a 1-0 win against No. 6 Oyster River in Sunday’s quarterfinals to advance.
“This was one of those games that wasn’t pretty for us, but the girls kept fighting and got the job done,” Bow coach Jay Vogt said on Sunday. “We will need to be better for our next game.”
The Falcons already knows what happens when they don’t play their best against Hollis Brookline. After improving to 6-0 with an impressive 6-1 win against Milford (which is the No. 4 seed and playing in the other D-II semifinal on Thursday against No. 1 Hanover), Bow lost at Hollis Brookline, 2-0, on Sept. 23.