Girls Soccer: Thunderbolts Winning Streak Continues

A late game offensive outburst sparked the Thunderbolts to a 4-0 victory over Hope High School in a girls soccer match on Thursday afternoon. Cranston East won its fourth consecutive game, following two losses last week.

Early on in the match, the Bolts took advantage of a costly mistake. Hope sophomore Leslie DeLeon passed the ball back to the keeper, Onyinyechi Nyoku, but the plan did not work. The ball found the back of the net because Nyoku was not expecting the pass, and East led 1-0 only five minutes into the game.

Cranston East dominated possession throughoout the game and had several opportunities to pad to their lead. However, each golden opportunity was wasted in the first half, and the lead remained at one goal.

"They were making good runs and putting passes together, but they were just off in the first half," Bolts head coach, Lauren Tomasso said, "Today we were a second half team."

In the second half, East continued to control the pace of the game and created many scoring opportunities. They had a few breakaways, but could not buy a second goal.

They would finally break though at towards the end of the second half. Senior Kelsy Evje hustled for the ball in the penalty area and flicked the ball in the air over the keeper. Evje ran onto it and buried it into the wide open net, giving East a 2-0 lead in the 69th minute.

The goal lit a fire in the Bolts and gave them an extra sense of urgency. Their offense gained confidence and they would score twice more in the next few minutes.

"The second goal gave them a boost of confidence because they were frustrated at all of the missed opportunities," Tomasso added.

Junior Hannah Meharg dribbled the ball down the right sideline and near the endline, executed a drop-back pass to Molly Burkhardt. She fired the shot into the lower 90 on the near post, extending the lead to 3-0. Adrianna Pagano notched the fourth goal of the game with a blast from the top of the box in the 75th minute.

Cranston East improves to 8-2 in league play and has won four consecutive games. With the loss, Hope drops to 1-9 on the season.