Soccer Team Focused on Playoffs

The Milford Scarlet Hawks only has one thing on their mind this season: playoffs.

The Hawks — who got off to a rip-roaring 6-3-2 record to start last season — dropped seven straight games, finishing the year. All the Hawks needed to do was win one of their last two games to make it into the playoffs, but they came up short.

Jim Asam, the head coach, hopes the experience becomes a motivator.

“I’m hoping that the guys that are returning from last year’s season, which is a good core of players, use that for motivation,” Asam said. “It wasn’t really anyone’s fault and it wasn’t like we weren’t giving the effort. We just didn’t get lucky. We were in some close games, had a couple of injuries at the end, but no excuses . . . the guys that were left were working hard to achieve that, but that didn’t happen. It’s a tough league and it was disappointing for everyone I think.”

Senior Will Marcal had his own take on last year's collapse:

“Last year we started off well, but then as the season went on everybody started getting on each other down the stretch. So this year, we just have to get our wins early, so that we have don’t have to worry about it at the end of the season.”

Last year aside, the Hawks have some great talent coming back, along with some key younger athletes who will look to help the team achieve its goal of getting back to the playoffs. In addition to Marcal, key players returning this season include seniors Gustavo Rocha, Henrique Riberio and Kevin O’Loughlin; juniors Jon O’Neil and Dylan Rizzo; and sophomores Bryan Rodriques and Justin Asam.

These returners will look to fill the void left behind by three senior captains in defender Matthew Ziegler, goal scorer John Damas and keeper Alex Usevicius.

But no one is more important than O’Loughlin, who will be the Hawks’ starting goaltender this year. O’Loughlin has had some varsity experience in big games, as he has stepped up a few years ago as a freshman when the team needed him to face Worcester and Algonquin, but he hasn’t played consistently at the varsity level. This year is his chance to prove himself, and he’s confident he can help the team out.

“I’m just hoping to improve this pre-season and see what varsity is all about and then once the regular season comes around just step up and make it a successful season,” he said. “I’m just trying to keep my cool and consistently do well throughout the season.”

Other key contributors will be midfielder and captain Rocha and striker Marcal, who will be called upon again offensively for Asam’s team. Despite the eight returners this season, Asam will have at least nine players on his roster without much varsity experience — most of them playing at the junior varsity level last season.

“Some of these younger guys are going to be put into situations where they haven’t been in, our league is so competitive and fast, that some of them are going to have a little learning curve with the change of pace coming up from JV to varsity,” Asam said. “We do have a lot of pre-season scrimmages — more than normal — and the whole idea with that was to get some of these younger guys a look at what the pace is going to be like and see who is able to step in and fill the spots from which we lost the guys last year.”

Rocha, the lone captain this season, believes that the importance to getting the younger players prepared for games at the varsity level is in practice. “I’m trying to motivate them for the varsity level for this year and next year by getting them to hustle hard on and off the field and even in practices — don’t take them as a joke, like we did last year — make sure we take practice serious, as if it were game speed and then when it comes to game time they know what to do,” he said.

The Hawks are young, but they have a knack for putting the ball in the net, something Asam is excited about this season. “We have the goal scorers, but it’s just the matter of finishing,” he said. “We’ve had opportunities the past few years where we’ve lost games because we haven’t put the ball in the net. It’s really going to be important for these guys to put it in the net.”

Though would love to score a lot of goals this season, what they really want to do is make it to the playoffs and beyond. With multiple teams in the Mid Wach A division graduating an abundance of seniors, now might be their time.

“I think this year we have a good chance of going far,” Rocha said. “Wachusett (who has made the playoffs the last two seasons) lost a lot of their starters from last year and we have had a really hard time with them in the past, but hopefully this year we have a chance of beating them.”

Milford begins their quest for the playoffs, at home, against division rival Nashoba at 4 p.m. Tuesday.