BRAINTREE, Mass. - The third time is supposed to be the charm - but it didn’t take Oliver Ames that many tries.
OA was back in Braintree the D2 South Finals for the second straight year, but this game had a much different outcome.
The Tigers got off a fast start, scoring inside the first 10 minutes of the game and held on to beat Hingham, 1-0, in the D2 South Sectional Finals. It’s the first ever sectional championship for the program. OA will now take on Concord-Carlisle in the MIAA D2 State Championship on Thursday at Marshfield.
“It was good, it was exciting, it was a good match,” Oliver Ames head coach John Barata said. “The boys came and played well. We should have put the game away early, it should have been 4-0 before they even had a shot, but it wasn’t and we let them get them. They’re a good team, very young and quick so we’re happy to get a good win against a good team. It wasn’t our best but it was enough.”
From the opening whistle, the Tigers jumped all over the Harbormen with high pressure. It was clear from the beginning that OA was looking to up and tempo and used quick restarts to get forward.
Just four minutes in, senior Zach Wyman used a quick long throw to find junior Keegan Nutt in the middle of the field. Nutt quickly slid the pass out wide to the left to Chris Romero, but his shot just went over the bar.
Just two minutes later, OA’s high pressure paid off. John Cerce played a ball back to Jared Mallers, who sent a service forward. That’s where senior Brandon Boone got a perfect flick with his head, springing Romero in behind and between two defenders. After a touch, Romero was taken down in the area and the ref signaled for a penalty kick.
Cerce stepped up and buried the shot into the bottom right corner to give OA a 1-0 lead in the seventh minute.
Just a minute later, it looked like OA doubled their lead when Wyman raced to a loose ball near the touch line and centered it and Romero knocked it in, but the linesman deemed the ball had crossed the end line before Wyman’s touch.
As Barata referred to, the Tigers could have had a bigger lead. They had a handful of chances inside the area but three were scuffed shots right at the goalie, another blocked at close range and one more shot sailing wide.
Hingham started to finally get some of the play 15 minutes into the game. The Harbormen nearly had the equalizer in the 16th minute when freshman Thomas Welch hit an off balance shot off the outside of his foot, but the shot curled off the far post and stayed out. Nearly 10 minutes later, sophomore Owen Murray had a shot on goal, but OA goalie Tim Andrew made the save.
The second half was more back and forth but Hingham couldn’t get either of their top players going. Both Murray and senior Aidan Ryan were bottled up thanks to freshman defender Nathaniel Cardoza. Similar to OA’s win over Pembroke, Cardoza focused strongly on both players and shut them down.
On three different occasions - the last with just over two minutes to play - there were scrambles inside Oliver Ames’ areas but Andrew, Mallers and Romero came away with the clearances.
“We knew we were going to absorb a lot of pressure but that’s why you want to get a goal, more than one goal,” Barata said. “We had a couple of miscues in the back that allowed for some scary clearances in the six but I’m very proud of the boys, they kept composed and sacrificed themselves and kept the ball out of the net.”
The Tigers are now in the D2 EMass Championship for the first time in program history. OA will take on Concord-Carlisle, who won the D2 North with a 5-2 win over Woburn. The Patriots entered the playoffs at 15-0-1 and have won four games in the playoffs, outscoring opponents 17-2.
The game is set for Thursday night at Marshfield at 7:30.
Ryan Lanigan can be contacted at [email protected] and followed on Twitter at @R_Lanigan.