Will Godbout ’20 plays striker and wing during the games against Belmont Hill and Milton. This is Godbout’s second year on the team.
Last Saturday, Andover fell 3-0 to Belmont Hill, putting the team’s record at 1-2 for the season.
According to Adam Hassanein ’22 and Alan Fang ’21, the game against Belmont Hill was hard-fought and demonstrated a solid effort by the team, especially on the defensive end.
Fang said, “I think we did a really good job defensively for the majority of the game. For the first seventy minutes we were organized. We communicated well and supported everyone well.”
“We had a great work rate. We defended really well for the majority of the game,” added Hassanein.
Hassanein continued, “The goals they scored on us were just small mistakes that we made. Overall, the score didn’t really reflect the outcome of the game.”
Due to the absence of starting goalie Kion Young ’20, former JV2 goalie Phineas Walsh ’21 played for the first time as Varsity goalie and met the challenge well, according to Fang.
Fang said, “Phineas had to step up and that was his first time playing in goal for us, so this was his first real test and I think that he did a good job in goal.”
Against Milton, one of Andover’s historically more challenging opponents, the team maintained a focused mindset throughout the game, despite making some errors, according to Ethan Hong ’22.
“I think we did really well with spirit and intensity. I think we could work on bringing the same energy we brought to this game,” said Hong. “I think we could work on definitely making safer passes and less risky passes.”
According to Fang, between the games, the team had a series of intense practices and team bonding activities to aid the initiation of the season. These team activities were designed to help the team connect and find their chemistry on the field.
“Our coach had us do this activity where we had one person that we would support throughout the day and during today’s practice he would ask us who our person was and if you couldn’t guess it correctly we had to run laps so that was part of some team bonding,” Fang said.
“I think we’re in a good place right now, we’re definitely improving after each practice. I feel like we just need to put it all together, just get some offense going and we’ll be good to go going into our game Wednesday,” added Hassanein.
Moving towards the next game, Fang added that the team needs to work on keeping the intensity levels up.
“I think we should work on maintaining the level of intensity throughout the game because we dropped off toward the end. That’s when we started conceding,” said Fang.
Next Wednesday, Andover will face Holderness away.
