Lexington Girls' Soccer Team Rolls to Victory

The Lexington High School girls' soccer team battled the Wakefield Lady Warriors to a 6-0 victory Saturday afternoon at Lincoln Field.

"We have to play much better than we did at Woburn (on Wednesday)," coach Frank Pagliuca said before Saturday's start. "We have to be focused on how we play; hopefully today we'll be ready to roll. It's our first home game, we're excited and hopefully we do something positive today.

"(Wakefield) is tough, they're athletic, they're physical (and) they're well coached, so I think it's going to be a great game. We have to take advantage of our opportunities, we didn't generate enough offense against Woburn, a lot of that was on us and we have to be a little bit more organized on the field."

In energetic play, roughly four minutes into the first 40-minute half, Lexington junior Emily Foley passed the ball to junior Shannon Boudett who crossed it over to junior Nandi Mehta for the game's first goal.

"We have to have a better start," Pagliuca said before the game. "The first 20-25 minutes (against Woburn) were tentative, we came out flat, Woburn took advantage of it and scored an early goal on us."

Coach Pagliuca's wishes came true with Mehta's early goal on Wakefield.

Lexington's goalie made a nice save at the 17-minute marker when Wakefield's sideline kick got to a Wakefield player who almost knocked the ball in.

A timeout was held with 12 minutes left and coach told his team, "Take your time. Drive it on the goal first," he said.

The team listened as they continued barreling for the ball and getting shots on net.

With 4:45 left, Boudett then shot from deep right, but the ball hit the goal post, and a follow-up kick was wide.

Lexington's perseverance in the second half paid off at the 20-minute mark when Boudett finally got her goal. A beauty from center stage, the ball soared through the air in the middle of the goal just above Wakefield's goalie's hands.

Lexington was up 2-0.

Two minutes later junior Alison Boreiko's shot from left in the penalty box went in to give Lexington a 3-0 lead.

"We're not stopping. We're playing like the score's 0-0," coach Pagliuca said to his team during a timeout.

Boreiko scored a second goal off a rolling pass from a sideline kick near the goal at 17 minutes. Up 4-0, it seemed as if Lexington could keep going, and the team did. At 11:32, freshman Diana Morrill's center kick from midfield went in the net.

The Minutemen's final goal was scored by senior Corinne Counsell with 3:10 left in the game.

"The first 10 minutes were strong, the last 10 minutes of the first half," Pagliuca said. "We had a little lull there but much better spacing, more organization out on the field I thought.

"Second half, shot the ball, had some great goals, so again it's encouraging to see, so hopefully we can take this and build off this.

 "Out here on a day like this on the turf it does get tiring," the coach said. "But they did a good job of conserving their runs a little bit as the game went along.

"We had people that stepped up from the bench today and the deeper you can be as a team, the better off you're going to be. It'll allow you to stand at that high level of playing and that's what you want to do," he continued.

Coach said he was happy that the team's sophomores and freshmen got off the bench.

"It's good that (they) got some game experience, some of those young kids had never been in the game before, it was positive for everybody."

Lexington's next game is at Winchester High School on Tuesday, Sept. 14 at 3:45 p.m.

"We have a tough game on Tuesday, but we'll be ready to play," Pagliuca said.