Written by Calvin Jackson |
Both Morgan’s Boys (MBS) and Girls (MGS) soccer teams exceeded expectations this season. For regular season play, the girls have posted a record of 12-3-1, placing them for 2nd in the Shoreline Conference standings and 8th in Class M for the state. Morgan Boys are 1st, on the top of both the Shoreline Conference and Class S state standings behind a record of 14-1-1 in the regular season. The girls have scored 38 total goals this season and let in 15. Morgan Boys have conceded 8 goals but scored a grand total of 51 goals.
The abundance of wins have not come easy for either team. At the end of September, back in the heat of the season, Morgan Girls barely beat Valley Regional by a score of 1-0. This win was one of the biggest wins that the Huskies acquired in the season. The tightly fought game ended with a Morgan win, but did not always appear to give that pleasing result. As mentioned in Huskies, Warriors, and Wins, Senior Kate Mozzochi scored the only goal of the game when she finished a pass back, sending the ball into the net. This put Morgan up on Valley 1-0 at the half, and the score would remain permanent until the end of the game had passed.
Freshman Alyssa LeMay plays forward for varsity and is one of the key players in the squad. She receives a gargantuan amount of varsity playing time compared to many of the other freshmen on the the team. Alyssa remembers the game as a fierce, aggressive game. “It was a very satisfying win considering that the Valley Girls were previously undefeated before they lost to us that night.”
Despite the girls winning record, they have endured 3 losses. Alyssa describes the losses as bumps in the road to their ultimate glory. “We lost to Immaculate, HK, and Old Lyme. All of the losses hurt, but at the same time they allow us to focus on what we need to do better which helps us to improve as individuals and a team.” The girls also avowed their loss against HK and translated that into a fire that ignited them to be able to beat them later in the season.
Morgan hopes to make a strong run in both the Shoreline and state tournaments. Alyssa put it like this, “We know that we are capable of beating any team that we might come up against. If we keep our mindset positive and stay focused on each game like it is our last then nothing can stop us from achieving Shoreline and state championships.”
Morgan Boys Soccer is having one of the best seasons that the team has had in the past decade. According to CIAC statistics, the year of 1964 was the last season that Morgan Boys attained the title of state champions. 2008 was the last year that they won the Shoreline championship. The team this season is striving to change that.
Sophomore Juan Avila is one of the two captains for the boys squad. He says, “Our record is great, and our team is amazing, but we still have a great deal of work to put in so that we can achieve the success that we want.” Juan is the team’s leading scorer and has also contributed the most assists. He led the Shoreline Conference with a total 25 goals.
One of the team’s amazing unique characteristics is that they are exceptionally young as a varsity squad. The starting line up consists of 2 seniors, 1 junior, 5 sophomores, and 3 freshmen. One of the starting freshmen, Matt Koziy, gives his feedback, “The advantage to having a good, young team is that we will be together for the next few years. This allows us to grow as a team throughout the next few seasons because we will bond and better connect. ” Morgan Boys have hopes to have a very strong team for the next few seasons in the future.
The team endured one loss that came early in the season against Lyme-Old Lyme. It was the 3rd game of the season, played at the Lyme-Old Lyme High School on a Saturday Morning. Morgan suffered a loss of 0-2. Senior Captain Anthony Choronzy commented on the game, “We have put it behind us and turned it around into motivation to be better than we were at the beginning of the season. There is a chance that we will face Lyme-Old Lyme in the finals of the Shoreline Tournament Finals. It will be then and there when our team will be truly tested for greatness.”
Boys soccer faces challenges in games throughout their season, but they also go up against the everyday challenge of starting a varsity team with 3 players who speak solely Spanish. Sophomore Marcio Valdez, Sophomore Jhan Carlos Bermeo, and Junior Antonio Osorio all start for the Morgan boys soccer team. They face the challenge of only being able to speak Spanish. When I asked Marcio about the difficulties of speaking a different language then the teammates around him, he used Google translate to respond to my question: “We are all very close. As teammates, we have connections by this time in the season. We know how each other plays, and that is what helps us to understand each other in the game.”
Both the Morgan Boys Soccer and the Morgan Girls Soccer teams beat their opponents in the semi-playoffs for the Shoreline Tournament that took place on the night of November 3rd. Morgan Girls beat Valley Regional with a score of 1-0 and the Boys squad beat Cromwell 2-0. Both teams has won themselves a spot in the Shoreline Tournament Finals that will be held at Portland High School in Portland on Friday, November 6th. The Morgan Boys final is against Lyme-Old Lyme at 5 pm. After, at 7 pm, the Morgan Girls final is against Lyme-Old Lyme as well.