The Easton soccer teams saw their seasons come to an end last week in the quarterfinal round of the Class D North playoffs.
Last Tuesday, the Bears’ boys team was blanked by Bangor Christian, 7-0, while the following afternoon, the Easton girls were nipped by Penobscot Valley High School in Howland, 3-2.
Coach Ryan Shaw’s boys ended up 10-5-1 on the season after they were outmatched by perennial power Bangor Christian in a game played at Husson University in Bangor. Easton was the 10th seed and BC was ranked second.
“They came out much quicker to the ball than we were early on,” Shaw said. “They are a very experienced team and we tried changing our formation up coming into the game, but they scored earlier and it put us back on our heels.
“A lot of our younger players struggled with their speed and physical play,” he added.
After the Bears fell behind 3-0, Shaw said his team started taking more chances in an attempt to put one by them, which led to the lopsided final score.
“We wanted to go down swinging as my philosophy is a loss is a loss, whether it is 1-0 or 11-0,” he added.
Bangor Christian went on to beat Ashland in the semifinals Saturday, 3-1, and will face Fort Fairfield in the regional championship this afternoon.
Shaw said it was a good season despite facing some adversity throughout due to injuries and other issues.
“It seemed like we were always throwing a new lineup out there due to something,” he said, “but some of our younger players earned some valuable experience playing in some big games. That will certainly help in the future.”
Jake Flewelling, a four-year starter at goalkeeper, is a key loss as one of the five graduating seniors on the Bears.
“Jake was a phenomenal leader on and off the field. There are not too many keepers at this level making the quality of saves that he was making for us,” Shaw said. “His teams won a lot of games over his career and he certainly was a huge reason for that.”
The other seniors are Hunter Brown, another four-year player who missed some time this year due to injury but “was one of the better players around,” according to Shaw, along with Mike Brown, Dustin LaCroix and Elias Coy.
The Easton girls, coached by Audra Fitzherbert, saw their seven-game winning streak come to an end at the hands of an always-strong PVHS squad.
The seventh-seeded Bears jumped out to a 2-0 lead on goals by Delia Bonner and Lydia Ferris, but No. 2 PVHS came back to score three unanswered goals in the second half to come out on top. Tori Watts had a pair of goals and Lauren Reed had the other for the Howlers, who improved to 14-1 on the season.
“We really did follow our game plan — scoring first, defending and then scoring again when we could,” Fitzherbert said, “but when PVHS scored on us in the second half, we let it get to us emotionally and we just couldn’t recover. We had two opportunities to score after, and just didn’t finish.”
The Howlers advanced to take on No. 3 Madawaska in Monday’s semifinals.
Easton finished up at 8-7-1 despite beginning the year by winning one of its first eight matches. The Bears went 6-0 to wrap up regular season play before topping Schenck in a home prelim.
“The girls were just in a good head space all around,” Fitzherbert said of the winning streak. “Everyone knew the objective and we followed through those last seven games.”
The team will lose four seniors — Elise Allen, Abigail Currier, Casey Lovely and Sara Gilman.
