Trojans hit red wall

SCARBOROUGH — The term “defense wins championships” doesn’t just apply to football.

The Scarborough girls soccer team proved that point all season, and drove it home on Wednesday night, beating Thornton Academy 1-0 for the Western Class A girls soccer title.

The Golden Trojans, who finish the season with a 13-4 record, were only able to get three shots off against the Red Storm defense, who have allowed just one goal all season, and converged onto Trojans goalie Sydney Proctor with a barrage of shots before Haley Carignan scored the lone goal for Scarborough midway through the second half. The Red Storm (17-0) will play Bangor for the Class A state championship on Saturday.

Thornton Academy head coach Chris Kohl was very gracious after the game, praising Scarborough in their win.

“They’re the best team in the state,” Kohl said. “No doubt in my mind, they are going to represent the West well on Saturday. I’m proud of my kids, my seniors had a great career, I can’t ask for anything else. It was a great Western Maine final. We’re disappointed we’re on the short end of it, but Scarborough took advantage of their opportunities, and that’s what it is.”

The first half was back and forth, with neither team getting much for scoring opportunities. Though ten minutes into the match, Scarborough goalie Jill Deering made what was possibly the play of the game. A ball took a bounce over Deering’s head, moving toward the goal. But Deering turned around, dove, and swatted the ball out of bounds, saving the Red Storm from giving up the first goal of the contest.

Both teams headed into halftime with a 0-0 score.

The tide turned in Scarborough’s favor in the second half, as the offense kept more pressure on the Thornton side of the field, getting eight shots off toward Proctor in the half alone. At the 19:00 mark, Carignan, a junior forward, took a rebound off Proctor on a shot by teammate Cortney Hughes and punched the ball into the open net for the goal.

As the clock hit zero, Scarborough stormed onto the field in celebration, leaving the Trojans staring into a sea of what might have been.

It was the second time the Thornton and Scarborough have played against each other during the season, with Scarborough taking both contests 1-0 on a goal in the second half.

All is not lost, however, for the defending Western Class A champions. Proctor led the Trojans with a school record 10 shutouts during the season, and freshman Amanda Arnold scored 10 goals in her rookie campaign.

For Kohl, however, he will remember the 2010 season for what the Trojans accomplished on defense.

“The fact we gave up nine goals all season, that’s tremendous,” Kohl said. “That’s a school record that’s awesome. You saw the close games, getting back here again, getting to the Western Maine final, winning the semifinal game, beating Windham. We lost some key players from last year’s team. We had to do some adjusting and things like that, but we’ve come a long way. We were 9-2 in our last 11 [matches], and both losses were to Scarborough.”

The Trojans will lose 14 seniors, led by Proctor, and captains Jackie Costello, Danielle Daigle, Samantha LeBlanc, Christie Roberts and Kaitlyn Hall.

“They won games than any other class in Thornton girls soccer history,” Kohl said. “I’ve had a lot of them, some for two, most for three, a lot for four [years], so it’s going to be different next year. We have nine core kids that we have coming back next year. There’s some great JV kids, great kids on the freshmen team. So things are looking good for us and we’re going to come back and start it up again in June with our summer program. It’s hard, it’s going to be kind of weird coming in tomorrow and not having practice.”

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