Nighthawk Girls’ Booters Happy To Get Challenged As Playoffs Approach

By Andy Hutchison

In a couple of weeks all of the games stand to be challenging. After all, that’ll be when the playoffs roll around.

For the 10-0-1 Newtown High School girls’ soccer team, there haven’t been too many tough tests throughout the campaign; wins have included 9-0, 7-0 and 7-1 laughers. Monday’s 2-1 win over visiting New Milford at Blue & Gold Stadium was a welcomed nail-biter in the eyes of NHS Coach Marc Kenney, whose team also had a 1-0 win over Joel Barlow of Redding and a 1-1 tie with Weston but otherwise has been able to pull away from the competition.

“One of the negatives — if there are any — of winning a lot of games is that you really want to get tested because you question what’s going to happen going into the SWC and state tournament when every game is going to be a test. So yeah, I think it definitely helps us to get tested,” Kenney said.

The Nighthawks avenged last year’s South-West Conference title game loss to New Milford and they are striving to get back to the pinnacle match — and win it all this fall. The win over New Milford may have felt good for the Hawks but there is still some unfinished business for the returnees who lost by just a goal in last year’s conference finale.

Kenney sees the New Milford match, one in which the Hawks took a 2-0 lead before hanging on behind a few strong saves by goalkeeper Caitlin Yakush, as a bit of an indicator that his team needs to improve to be the best it can be. On the whole, the coach was pleased with his team’s efforts, but noted: “Today we were a little sloppy possession-wise at times but New Milford makes you do some things you don’t want to do because they are pretty quick collectively.”

Against New Milford, Newtown got goals from Amy Martin and Sarah Lynch, and Melissa Buccino had an assist.

The Nighthawks were coming off a 3-1 win over Bunnell of Stratford on October 4. Martin, Buccino and Bridget Power hit the back of the net, and Tressa Scott and Brenna Kelly had helpers.

Newtown, beginning with Thursday’s scheduled clash with Brookfield (after The Bee sports section went to press), has five regular season games remaining. Then let the all-but-guaranteed-to-be-challenging games begin.