The Westfield and Scotch Plains-Fanwood rivalry continues as this year’s first matchup occurred on April 19.
This game seemed tight, as the first quarter closed tied 0-0. The scoreless quarter consisted of aggressive turnovers and back-to-back possessions. Senior goalie and quad-captain Corey Gilford said, “I think we matched up well against them and we have had better matchups before.” After the first quarter Gilford “was not worried. [Gilford] knew the team would pick up the pace.”
Things started to look up as the second quarter rose. Sophomore Koby Waldman said, “We just needed to take a deep breath, relax, and let everything come to us.” Westfield’s team chemistry finally became apparent and their shots began to hit the back of the net. Though the Blue Devils did not have a complete shutout, SPF managed to slip one goal past Westfield to end the quarter 3-1.
Not only did the second quarter consist of better team chemistry, but senior Gavin Laconti scored his first goal of the season. Laconti felt this was “a long time coming” and it “felt really good to help in a tight quarter.”
Head coach William Wertheimer said, “We came out in the beginning shooting right away and we were struggling to get the ball in the back of the net. But, we started shooting better and our defense started to put a little more pressure on them and we got a couple turnovers, pushing the pace a little bit. [SPF] went to this defense where they were denying [senior Washington and Lee commit Garrett Ferguson], so we tried to play with that and that system to have success.”
One major fault the Blue Devils faced throughout this game was their aggressive gameplay, leading to an abundance of penalties. Wertheimer said, “Being man down is tough. We talk about certain things like not going for the body, trying to lift the bottom hand, making things more difficult for them instead of throwing checks.”
Agreeing with Wertheimer, Gilford said, “Moving forward we have to stop the penalties, it was really bad. We might have been in the penalty box for over a quarter of the game.”
The Blue Devils also struggled to counter the Raiders’ face-off player, senior Brown commit Ryan Mauer. Only possessing 2 of 14 faceoffs, Westfield still managed to regain possession and dominate offensively and defensively. Laconti said, “We learned how to counter a good faceoff guy. We really struggled with that, but we figured out how to put the poles on the wing and take it from there.”
Coming into the second half, the Blue Devils locked down on offense and were able to dance around SPF’s defense. “The offense was able to continue to pump in goals and keep the pressure on SPF for the remainder of the game. The defense continuously got the ball back into the hands of the offense which helped finish out the game,” said quad-captain Drew Pravlik.
The Blue Devils will be back in action today as they face Ridgewood away at 4:30 p.m. on April 22. Wertheimer said, “We will need to be more of a team offensively and put the ball in the back of the net.”
