Coginchaug Rallies to Beat Portland

The Portland girls’ soccer team had won six games in a row and quickly jumped out to a 2-0 lead against Coginchaug on Thursday.

Halfway through the season, good things seemed to be coming easily for the Highlanders, but the Blue Devils proved to be anything but as they rallied for a 3-2 double-overtime victory in Durham.

Portland (7-2) struck early with goals from Rachel DeBarge and Amanda Ghent but momentum then began to shift to Coginchaug. Despite the increased pressure on the Highlanders defense, the Blue Devils failed to capitalize and trailed at the half, 2-0.

“They are very well skilled, very well coached,” Portland coach Norm Booth said. “This is a surface they play on all the time and they are very, very tough here.  We just got caught on our heels and didn’t recover. When you are up 2-0 against a team like this on this type of surface you can’t stay back and we got caught on our heels and they just kept coming.”

The surface Booth was referring to is the artificial turf, part of the new athletic complex at the school. The Highlanders seemed to have some trouble adjusting to it.

In the second half, Coginchaug continued to get the better of the play half and finally broke through on a goal by Lauren Esposito. It was the first goal Portland had allowed in more than two games. Soon after, Victoria Buonanni added another goal for the Blue Devils and less than 10 minutes into the second half, the score was tied.

Coginchaug (5-2-1) continued to press the action, creating several scoring chances but couldn’t get the tiebreaker sending the game into overtime. The teams played to a draw in the first 10-minute session, but with 6:57 remaining in the second, Espositio scored what proved to be the game winner.

“They forced three more mistakes that they put in the net and we couldn’t force anything else,” Booth said. “[Sam Mancinelli] in the back, she did a great job sweeping and really kept us off our attack once they adjusted. We couldn’t build anything. These guys came out and took it to us. Our hats off to them, they played very well.”

Through nine games, Booth likes what he has seen from his team and where they are positioned heading into the final seven regular season games.

“We’re right where we want to be,” he said. “Our goal at the start of the year was to make the Shoreline tournament. The top four teams make it and we’re still in the hunt for that, very much so.

“We’re in great shape. I’m very confident we’re going to do very well.”

As for this game, Booth took the loss in stride.

“We’re going to run into bumps like this,” he said. “You run into a team like Coginchaug, they’re senior laden, they’re well coached, on their surface … you’ve got to really come prepared to play a full 80 [minutes]. We played as hard as we could but they took it to us. The credit goes to them. They really took us off our game.”

Portland will play at Westbrook on Saturday at 10:30 a.m.