The MVRHS girls soccer team won on the home turf at Dan McCarthy Field for the first time this season by downing Cape Cod Tech, 7-0, in a Cape and Islands League match on Tuesday afternoon.
Six players put the ball in the net for the Vineyarders (2-8-1), who got off to a fast start, with Klara Reimann lofting in a perfect lob from 25 yards out, just 1:31 into the match. Chloe Combra picked up an assist on the play. Madia Bellebuono and Gabby Vieira threatened to double the lead moments later with two shots in rapid succession, but Crusaders goalkeeper Mikayah Reynolds turned them aside.
One minute after Alexis Condon clanged a shot off the crossbar, she fired another shot on target, and Bellebuono put in the rebound to give the Vineyarders a 2-0 lead at 14:30.
Condon continued to apply pressure around the Crusader goal, and blasted a shot inside the right post to make it 3-0 with 17 minutes left in the first half.
With the hosts pouring on the pressure, Erin Debettencourt put the ball off the crossbar in the 28th minute, and scored in the 29th to send the Vineyarders to the halftime break up 4-0. If not for Reynolds’ stellar goalkeeping and two outstanding plays by her defenders to clear the ball off the goal line, the deficit could have been far worse.
The Vineyarders tallied three more times in the second half. Six minutes in, Madia Bellebuono finished off some fine passing in the Cape Tech box by slotting the ball inside the left post from five yards out to earn her second goal of the match. Less than a minute later, Julia Dostal cut in from the left flank and fed a pass to Ava Vigneault, who cut to the right around a Crusader defender and fired the ball past onrushing keeper Rivera for goal No. 6. After trading places in the Vineyard goal with sister Klara, Ruby Reimann closed out the scoring with 25 minutes remaining by dribbling through the entire Crusader defense to put the ball in the twine at close range.
For Vineyard Coach Rocco Bellebuono, the win was a positive learning experience for a team building confidence and growing more comfortable understanding the game and its tactics. “Time and space. It makes the game easier when you have time and space,” he said. “Just the fact that they understand when they have that time it gives them the opportunity to see what [the game] should look like all the time — and the fact that they’re executing it and interpreting the game and creating ways on their own is good.”
Contrasting his team’s play on Tuesday with their previous outing on Saturday in a tough defeat away to Nantucket, Coach Bellebuono said that pressure tests a player’s confidence with the ball. “When you add the pressure, things kind of fall apart a little bit,” he said. “That’s mostly just a lack of self-confidence. When you have a ball passed to you and somebody is running at you and you’re not confident in your ability to control the ball, then you’re going to get scared. So, you know, this [Tuesday’s match] is great. It gives them a little more opportunity to have some time. I saw all their heads up, they’re looking, they’re checking the field before they get the ball, they’re getting their heads up after they get the ball, they’re finding the pass, they’re connecting, fast with their feet, accurate passing. It was good.”
After a road match at Sturgis East on Oct. 11, the Vineyarders are back home on Saturday against Sturgis West at 11:15 am.