THORNDIKE — Quick. Easy. Almost effortless. At least that was how it looked.
The No. 7 Mount View girls soccer team scored early and often in the opening half and then played that lead to its advantage Saturday afternoon, posting a 3-0 shutout win over No. 10 Ellsworth in a Class B North prelim. The Mustangs advanced to Wednesday’s regional quarterfinal round for the first time in three years.
“We came out with a lot of intensity, won all the 50-50 balls and just played our game,” Mustang sophomore Sage Pound said.
A trio of sophomores — Ari Allen, Gabby Allen and Pound — scored for Mount View (11-4-0). Zoe Mayhew, also a sophomore, needed only to make four saves to post her first career playoff shutout, but two of those were crucial second-half stops.
Mayhew stonewalled Sierra Andrews on a penalty kick in the 72nd minute and then turned away Addi Laslie on a breakaway four minutes later for Ellsworth (7-8-0).
Part of the reason Mayhew had such a relatively light workload was in part because Pound, central midfielder Shala Davis and center backs Hannah Coolen and Taylor Hodgdon gave the Eagles very little room to operate. As a group, they combined to repeatedly shut down Ellsworth’s attempts at a possession game
By the second half, the Eagles were reduced to not much more than a kick-and-chase team.
“I think that’s where our strength is, right up the middle,” Mount View coach Dave Page said. “We’ve got some really experienced kids there and some younger kids, and they’ve really jelled. They’ve come together and done a great job controlling the midfield.”
“There was maybe a 10-minute breakdown when we weren’t winning balls, but everything was under control,” Davis said. “We were pumped up today, all day.”
Ari Allen opened the scoring in the fifth minute, when she converted a corner kick from Davis. Before the game was 20 minutes old, Gabby Allen added a second for the Mustangs, linking up with Abbi Downer out of the right corner for a short-angle shot she tucked under the crossbar.
Pound’s goal in the 26th minute put things out of reach. The slight striker picked the ball cleanly off the feet of Ellsworth back Kayla Duhaime near midfield and was off on a breakaway for the 3-0 lead.
“I think that showed the other team that they didn’t have a chance anymore,” Pound said of her key third goal.
“We wanted to make sure we came out ready to go,” said Page, whose team lost its regular season finale to Foxcroft on Tuesday. “I think losing over there on Tuesday really woke these kids up. They were ready to go.”
Travis Barrett — 621-5621
tbarrett@centralmaine.com
Twitter; @TBarrettGWC
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