By JOE DUBALL
October 09. 2017 10:11PM
 

Talk of division re-alignments for many NHIAA sports has sprouted up over the last week. Such chatter always raises the question of how a given team will respond to a new league and opponents.

Bow High School will not see any changes after moving from Division III to Division II in most sports last season. The Falcons’ soccer programs are fine examples of teams thriving against heightened competition. The Bow boys and girls are a combined 21-3 in their second run through Division II this season.

The 11-1 start for the Bow girls is not a huge shock on the surface. The Falcons, who won four of the previous five D-III girls’ titles before moving, were semifinalists in D-II last season after a 13-3 regular season. Despite the pedigree, this season’s success was far from a given, according to girls’ coach Jay Vogt.

“I really had no clue what to expect and you really can’t when you lose 12 players,” Vogt said. “From the beginning (of this year), this group has kind of grown up together. We’ve got our young players merging with a group returning from last year.”

Vogt’s girls would be undefeated right now if not for a 1-0 loss to Portsmouth on Sept. 12, which was simply “a bump in the road,” according to Vogt. Opponents have been laid to waste by the Falcons since the loss as Bow has outscored those clubs 29-4 en route to six straight wins.

“I think we really focused on being organized defensively and figured we’d generate offense from there,” Vogt said. “It really depends on the game. If we can defend well and keep it close, then it’s less pressure on us up front, which is a good thing.”

Emma Gagne and Taylor Burnham are two of the most important players in keeping things together out back. Lauren Goyette has offered an active presence in the midfield, as have twin sisters Kayleigh and Amanda Marshall.

The Bow boys have been equally as good as their female counterparts this season, reeling off a 10-2 record thus far. Unlike the girls, the boys couldn’t get their Division III results to transfer to Division II initially. The Falcons were 15-1 in their final D-III season but went just 9-7 in D-II last fall.

“We competed last year but we weren’t able to beat good teams,” said Bow boys’ coach George Pinkham. Bow beat just one of last year’s top eight seeds in the D-II tournament during its regular season slate. “This year has been a little bit of a surprise but this year I have Global Premier Soccer players. The one thing that separated teams when we were last in Class M (now D-II) was if you had club players. We’re getting those players now.”

Pinkham identified GPS products like midfielders Chris Gallier and Max Elsasser along with goalie Joe Rychwalski as big difference makers while four of Bow’s five freshmen on varsity play with the club team out of Bedford. Additionally, the Falcons have used a club teams out of Bow and consistent feeder programs to earn a boost, but that’s only developed due to Bow’s ongoing reputation as a solid program.

“You look at towns in this state that have been successful with soccer and they do it with a strong base,” Pinkham said. “Success breeds success. Younger kids are seeing it here with our teams and they want to be a part of it.”

The positive results were coming almost too easily in the season for Bow, especially on the attack up front. The Falcons have had no problem finding the back of the net with 37 goals this season. The offensive prowess was summed up best for Pinkham when they scored a 5-2 win against perennial D-II power Oyster River of Durham on Sept. 15.

“I told the papers after that game that you don’t even score five goals against Oyster River in a decade,” Pinkham said. “Every game we had with them in the past, one goal is the difference.”

Gallier, Elsasser and Will Russo have been the best offensive weapons to this point in the season. Center fullback Ben Guertin is in his fourth year as a starter for Bow but it’s his first year on the back line. Pinkham opts to deploy Guertin as a true sweeper with many teams attacking the Falcons head-on.

While a 10-2 record is something he wants his players to be proud of, Pinkham sees his Falcons becoming too comfortable in their winning ways. The most recent example came Friday in a 2-1 loss to Pembroke, which has served Bow both of its losses this season.

“It’s not coming as easy because teams see us now after sneaking up on teams,” Pinkham said. “You have to be ready to play every game. That’s the difference between competing in D-II versus D-III. Teams in this division are capable of beating each other when one doesn’t come ready. You know there are going to be four to five teams to beat in Division III but then you’ll get a breather. That’s not the case here.”

- - - - - - - - -  -

PLENTY OF hurdles exist for both Bow teams over the remainder of their regular-season slates, but the girls are in for a huge test with a trip to Hanover today.

It’s easy to forget the Marauders play in Division II while their male counterparts are up in Division I. However, the Division II girls’ ranks are always mindful of Hanover, which won back-to-back titles in 2014 and 2015 and then made it to the semifinals last season.

This installment of the Marauders appears to be as strong as any with their 8-1-2 showing, which includes a nine-game unbeaten streak (7-0-2) heading into today.

“It’s a different look on the pitch and has actually taken us a while to figure out who works best in each position,” Hanover coach Doug Kennedy said. The Marauders lost eight seniors and have five freshmen, which is the most a Kennedy-coached team has had. “We’ve had to also learn how to go about winning in Division II with a lot of strong teams, of which many we have on our schedule.”

Finding a common ground between the club’s youth and experience is another challenge but one Hanover is conquering, especially out back. Kennedy said center backs Mindy Wu and Sophie Miles have brought along the youth flanking them incredibly well while sophomore keeper Bella Bardales has done well in directing what’s going on in front of her. That ever-improving connection among defenders has helped Hanover hold opponents to five goals this season.

The stifling effort out back has been somewhat of a necessity with Hanover scoring two goals or fewer in all but one game this season.

“We don’t go into games just focusing on defense and looking for counters. We want balance,” Kennedy said. “I think we expect to create opportunities and have, but the finish hasn’t been there. … In terms of possession, it’s gone very well. That final 10 percent (of the attack) hasn’t produced results as frequently as we’d like.”

While the offense has been a bit lacking, Kennedy did praise the tireless efforts of Kate Wagner and Carly Craft in trying to kick-start things up front.

As far as today’s visit from Bow goes, Kennedy isn’t using it as a measuring stick like most teams might. Hanover already lost 1-0 in its visit to Bow on Sept. 1, which was just the second game of the season for the Marauders.

“It’s good to play one of the high-level teams in the league but it’s not an end-of-the-world situation,” Kennedy said. “If we felt we couldn’t play with them then this would be something more to look at. We felt we could after that loss and it’ll be interesting to see how they’ve come along since then, and I’m sure they’re wondering the same about us.”