MANSFIELD, Mass. – Sometimes the final minutes of a game are about calmness, composure, and coolly holding onto possession to see out the result. Other times, those last few minutes are all about holding on for dear life and doing anything and everything to keep the ball out of your net.
The finish to Tuesday night’s Davenport division clash at Alumni Field was anything but calm.
Maddie Fernandes scored twice in two minutes to put Mansfield in front but fellow freshman Jolie Diaz halved the deficit for Oliver Ames with 11 minutes play, setting up a wild, frenetic ending. In a game that had playoff intensity, the Hornets demonstrated a trait that could serve them well in two weeks, when tournament play begins, holding off OA’s late charge and pulling out a 2-1 win.
“I told Britt those last 10-plus minutes you guys were making every crack for us evident and you got one of them through and I was waiting for the next one to get through, but we kind of held it together,” Mansfield coach Kevin Smith explained. “We’ll learn from it.”
“We’ll learn how to clear the ball and how to have composure. It’s a great learning experience for us. We did hold…enough, so that was good. We’re getting better every day.”
While OA coach Britt Sellmayer was happy that his team kept fighting to the final whistle, he wanted that level of intensity much sooner. “Happy how we played the last 15 minutes but you have to play 80 minutes and we didn’t have that sense of urgency when we came out.”
“The idea is not to put yourself in that position and we did.”
From the opening kick, Mansfield made it a point to put the pressure on OA, trying to put balls in behind the defense and pressing high up the pitch. The Hornets started the game well, pinning OA back and limiting the chances to move through midfield, but they also weren’t creating many opportunities of their own.
Despite the home team having an edge in territory in the opening 40 minutes, it was the visitors who had the best chances.
Lindsey Nosalek created the first look at goal after 12 minutes, crossing a ball from the right wing to Rhiya Fisher, whose first-time effort was comfortably held by Mansfield keeper Olivia Salisbury (five saves). Two minutes later, Mary Cross teed up a long shot for Taykor deVos but again it was easy for Salisbury.
Midway through the first half, Mansfield had its first good look. Freshman Olivia Dunham played an angled free kick into the box to her center back partner Kara Santos, but the junior headed wide of the far post. Carly Devine then had a chance with a quick turn after a throw in and OA keeper Janiya Mathier was able to push the shot around the post.
OA finished the first half with a flurry of chances. Diaz chased a long ball down the right wing, won the battle for possession, and cut back inside before firing a shot that Salisbury had to hold near the post. Inside the final five minutes, Jenna Gilman got loose on the left and cut the ball back. Mansfield was unable to clear cleanly and Emma Gavin popped up with a shot on target from the edge of the box.
“Mansfield played so well in the first half,” said Sellmayer. “We played seven minutes in the first half, they dominated about 30 of it. We were lucky to be there at that point. We decided to play the last 15 minutes of the match and that’s not good enough. That’s a life lesson and we’re going to have to learn from it.”
Mansfield turned the game on its head 10 minutes after the break.
Olivia Homsi played the ball to freshman Alexandra Fernandes, who worked space for a powerful strike that Mathier (four saves) kept out at full stretch. The OA keeper was quick to her feet and charged down Lyla Nappa, who was racing in to get the rebound. Dunham curled the resulting corner to the back post where Maddie Fernandes was able to get enough of the cross to sneak it inside the post.
With the momentum of the opening goal, Mansfield quickly doubled the advantage. Good pressure down the right wing forced a loose ball about 20 yards from goal. Fernandes ran onto and drilled a shot up over the keeper and just under the bar.
“We don’t have a lot of big-time, double-digit goal scorers,” Smith said about how his team seems to have a different player stepping up each game. “We kind of spread it around and it’s a team effort. We’re a good sum of our parts.”
The cliche is that a two-goal lead is the most dangerous in soccer. It started to feel that way for the Hornets when OA suddenly picked up the tempo of its play in the final quarter of an hour.
With 11 minutes to go, the Tigers were able to get on the board. deVos angled a long free kick to the back post where Gavin rose highest and cleverly nodded it back across the face of goal. The Hornets were drawn to the first ball and Diaz was alone in the six to head it in.
OA seemed to have wind in its sails and started to deliver a series of free kicks into the Mansfield penalty area. Each one seemed to bounce around multiple times before it was eventually cleared. Diaz also created a chance with a cut back to deVos that Salisbury was able to hold and with three minutes to go deVos had another set piece that hit players on both sides before Salisbury gratefully fell on it a few feet from the goal line.
“One of our three keys is put so much pressure on the other team that they have trouble playing forward,” Smith said about his team’s energy level from the start. “We know we can do that and we can come up with that second ball, force errant passes, and then go on our attack. We did it really well for a large part of the game tonight.”
Mansfield (7-3-3) extended its unbeaten run to eight games, since a loss to OA in the first meeting, and will try to keep that going when Sharon comes to Alumni Field on Thursday. Oliver Ames (10-2-1) saw its 11-game unbeaten run come to an end on Tuesday, but can still seal at least a share of the league title with a win against Canton on Friday.