Junior Olivia Thornton dribbled the ball down the outside of the Oak Knoll box, head up. She spotted an open teammate and perfectly placed her cross to the back post for freshman Emilie Cadigan to finish the beautiful play with a header into the back of the goal, continuing the Blue Devils’ impressive offensive performance. The goal would put them up 6-0 and would be the last score in the shutout.
Entering this matchup against Oak Knoll, Westfield had impressively outscored teams 20-4, and this game was no different. “I don’t know if we thought 6-0, but I definitely thought we were going to be able to move the ball against Oak Knoll,” said head coach Alex Schmidt.
To start off the match, the Blue Devils came out of the gate with a 4-3-3 formation. However, Oak Knoll countered that, maintaining majority of the possession for the opening 10 minutes. After making some adjustments, Westfield started to gain control of play, and were granted an opportunity with a corner 20 minutes in. Junior Erin Hazard lined up to take the corner, and placed it right into the box for junior Audra Toth to bang it into the goal for the opening tally. “As I’m taking the corner I look for the runners from the top,” Hazard explained. “We send delayed runners into the box so I aim and I look for Audra and Ella at the top of the box as they’re running in.”
Seven minutes later, Toth and Hazard struck again as they came together to put a second one past the Oak Knoll keeper in the exact same fashion, with a header off of a set play. “I was trying to make space for myself and hold so that the defender didn’t think that I was going to come through and then I was able to sneak in behind them at the last second to finish the cross,” Toth said.
The celebrations did not stop for the Blue Devils, as sophomore Mary Lane got to a rebound first and put the Blue Devils ahead 3-0 with 11:15 left in the first half. Sophomore Andie Janota received a brilliant pass from Lane to take a four-goal lead less than three minutes later.
To begin the second half, Westfield had an amazing opportunity to capitalize on a free kick outside of the Oak Knoll box, but the attempt was halted by the defense. However, Toth made her memorable game even more spectacular, driving a long through ball into the attacking third of the field, leading to sophomore Ashley Yenawine making a spectacular solo effort, battling against two Oak Knoll defenders to break free and finish a tremendous play to increase the Blue Devils’ lead to five.
“There’s four trophies you want to win and conference is the first one so we want to take care of that first. We don’t have many home games, and we want to make sure that when we’re at home we play as well as possible,” Schmidt said. Westfield has certainly hit the ground running, now having won their opening six matches and outscoring their opponents by wide margins. They look to continue their hot streak as they visit Kent Place on Thursday, Sept. 28 at 4 p.m.
