Thornton wins big on senior night

SACO — A constant rain couldn’t stop the Thornton Academy girls soccer team Wednesday night, and neither could the South Portland Red Riots, as the Trojans rolled to an 8-0 win on senior night.

Both teams used the first couple of minutes of the game to figure out how the ball was going to bounce, and how far it would go, as the rain seemed to alter the normal laws of physics.

Once the Trojans got comfortable with the conditions, they got comfortable with finding the back of the net, too. Amanda Arnold opened the scoring 12 minutes in, as she sent a shot in from 20 yards out on the right side past Red Riots goalie Emma Russell. Meg Hurrell doubled the lead midway through the half on a shot at the top of the box that made its way through some traffic. Arnold assisted on the goal on a play that started with Haley DeGraca bringing the ball deep into the left corner.

The halftime break did nothing to cool down the Trojans attack, as they scored early and often in the second half. Senior Courtney O’Brien scored two goals four minutes apart within the first 10 minutes of the half. Arnold scored her second goal of the game just 17 seconds after O’Brien’s second goal, looping a strike from 40 yards out through Russell’s wet gloves.

“I haven’t scored two goals in one game, so it (felt) like a lot of hard work was paying off,” said O’Brien.

Tori Daigle, Devin Marsh and Kaitlyn McCrum also scored second half goals for Thornton. It was a rare goal for Marsh, a senior defender who was playing up front late because it was her last regular season home game.

“Seeing Devin get her first goal tonight was awesome,” said Thornton coach Chris Kohl, who gave his seniors a memorable send-off.

O’Brien said the team, the seniors especially, decided to go out and have fun in the second half, and it played to its advantage.

“We work best when we’re having fun,” said O’Brien. “So we just were like ”˜it’s our senior night, last home game. So let’s go (out) with a bang.’ And we scored six goals.”

“It was big,” Kohl said of extending the lead early in the second half. “On a wet (night) like tonight, even just being up 2-0 at half, the ball can skid and take some weird bounces. You don’t want to give them any sort of momentum.”

Despite their undefeated record with just two games to go, the Trojans still don’t control their own destiny in securing the No. 1 seed for the playoffs. Windham has one tie and no losses, and lead the heal point standings with a better strength of schedule. Kohl said “all we can do is just win” ”“ to put themselves in position to have as many home playoff games as possible.

The road gets tougher for Thornton on Saturday, when it travels to take on Sanford.

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