Co-Captain Garnet Hathaway ’10 scored two goals in the first half as Andover cruised in its season-opener last Friday, shutting out St. Paul’s School, 4-0. On Wednesday, Andover fell against a physical Brooks School team, 2-1, on a last-minute goal. In front of a home crowd last Friday, Andover jumped out to an early lead behind Hathaway’s goals to take the 2-0 lead. “Garnet scored a couple of good goals to get us going. You’ll see a lot of that this season,” Coach Steve Carr said. A great scoring opportunity came with only a few minutes left in the first half when postgraduate Sam Percival ’10, playing right back, sent Tebs Maqubela ’11 a beautiful ball over the defense. Maqubela and Hathaway, the two strikers, then had a two on none with only the goalkeeper to beat. Maqubela sent another quick pass across the box to a sprinting Hathaway, but the goalkeeper came out to meet the ball just before Hathaway could get a foot on the ball to end the play. Andover came out strong in the second half. Just nine minutes in, Maqubela had the ball again at the top of the box after an entry pass by the midfield. With several players in the box, Maqubela avoided pressure and fired a shot into the lower left corner of the net for the team’s third goal of the match. Hathaway’s helpful shielding of a defender and screening of the goalie allowe d Maqubela to get off a solid shot. With 22 minutes left in the half, Gabriel Cordero ’12 added the fourth and final goal to seal the victory in Andover’s first game. “I thought we played pretty well as a whole,” Carr said, “we had a few guys who really stepped up and worked hard, Kyle Leahy [’10] and Noah Le Gros [’12] in particular.” Andover took a short ride to Brooks School in North Andover this past Wednesday and suffered their first loss of the year. Andover struck first, as Myles O’Neil ’12 scored on a brilliant cross from Maqubela. O’Neil made an excellent run down the wing, and found the back of the net for the first goal of his varsity career. Brooks later got the ball in the penalty area, threatening to score, when centerback Peter Lee-Kramer ’11 tried to hit a clearance ball out of the area. The ball hit teammate Percival and ricocheted into the net for an own goal to tie the game up 1-1. “We played too tentative early on,” said Carr. “We didn’t work hard enough, we weren’t running through balls, and it seemed like the effort just wasn’t there.” About 80 minutes into the game, a Brooks forward scored an excellent goal, giving Brooks a 2-1 lead. It would stay that way for the rest of the game. “It was not our best day,” Carr said. “We played with much more intensity, energy, and effort in the second half, which was a positive, but overall we did not play well.” Andover goes into their next game with a 1-1 record. The team hopes to add another win in a home game against Loomis this Saturday.
