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It’s been a long season already for the Norwell Knights boys soccer team and the New Haven Bulldogs made it feel a little longer with a 2-0 victory Thursday night at the Courtyard.
New Haven (3-4) was led by goal scorers Zach Reynolds and Nate Blair and goalkeeper Jerod Hevel who notched the shutout.
The loss dropped Norwell’s record to 1-7 overall and 0-3 against NHC opponents.
New Haven simply out-played the Knights.
“We lack a lot of energy and lack a lot of emotion and motivation to play hard,” said Norwell coach Jeremy Steele after the match. “Teams are just simply out-playing us and they are having success at it. The longer we continue to be lackadaisical the longer we’re going to continue to suffer losses.”
“I’ve tried a lot of different ways to try to motivate them and it doesn’t seem that any of them work. So perhaps, they are just not expecting to have to play hard because we’ve had a lot of success over the last few years. I think that maybe because we’ve had that success over the last couple of years that teams are elevating their level of play against us and we’re not matching that.”
Reynolds scored the first goal for New Haven after nine minutes had been played.
Then after 20:40 had ticked off the clock, the Bulldogs finished the scoring by perfectly executing a direct kick. Oscar Coreas took the direct kick and sent it right on Blair who headed the ball into the Knights’ goal past goalkeeper Adam Harris.
“Nobody challenged for the ball or if we were challenging we were two or three steps behind,” said Steele. “Set plays are where a large majority of the goals are scored in the game. We know and recognize that these situations are occurring and we’ve got to tighten up our defense in those situations.”
New Haven also missed two other scoring opportunities in the first half. The Bulldogs had one goal negated by an offside violation and another shot hit the goal post and bounced out.
Hevel had a few close calls, but Norwell never mounted a consistent offensive attack.
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