WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. – Six different players found the back of the net Friday night as the Mount Greylock boys soccer team earned a 6-0 win over McCann Tech in the Western Massachusetts Class tournament semi-finals.
Mount Greylock (7-6-3) will make its third straight trip to the regional final as, once again, its rugged Churchill Division schedule is paying big dividends in the post-season.
“It’s a strange, new dynamic for us, because we’re gonna have to just scrape and claw for everything in the regular season,” Mount Greylock coach Blair Dils said. “And then we get into the post-season, and we can have a little more time on the ball. We can do more things. We can put the ball in the net a little bit more, and then we get ourselves into the Western Mass final.”
Jude Barzousky scored a goal and set up two more to lead the Mount Greylock offense on Friday.
Will Igoe, Kofie Roberts, John Morales, Gavin Herrington and George Munemo each scored a goal, and Declan Rogers had a pair of assists.
Will Anagnos needed to make just one save to preserve his clean sheet.
At the other end of the field, Jesse Brazee saw considerably more action for the Hornets (8-8-2).
“Jesse is an MVP in all our minds,” McCann Tech coach Stephen McAllister said of the senior keeper. “He’s phenomenal. He saved a lot for us. If we didn’t have him, it would have been really ugly.”
Mount Greylock’s statistician had Brazee with 20 saves.
But the Mounties did find a way past him four times in the first half to take control of the game.
McAllister knew that stepping up from the Bi-County league to face an opponent from one of Western Massachusetts’ toughest divisions would be a challenge. And, by and large, he was happy with what he saw from his young McCann side – especially toward the end of the first half and into the second.
“Definitely, this can only help us,” McAllister said of the opportunity created by McCann Tech’s road upset of second-seeded Athol on Thursday. “We’re gonna learn from this. And we’re gonna talk about today’s game later. And we’re going to go over things that they did and things we can do better.
“Like I said during the half-time talk, there was not really much I could do other than just give them a few things that need to happen. And they did work and try to do it. But I think our big thing is we’ve got to work a little harder on our communication, and then we’ll go somewhere.”
Dils and the Mounties, meanwhile, took advantage of their big half-time lead by sprinkling the field with reserves most of the second half.
“That feels good because those guys have been working hard, and we’ve just had so many tight games,” he said. “So get some of the younger guys and some of the guys that are on the bench into the game, it was nice to see them contribute.”
As for the one thing that has eluded the Mounties in its trips to the first two finals of the new look Western Mass tournament – a title – Dils knows that Ware will present a challenge.
Top-seeded Ware has outscored its first two tournament opponents by a combined 16-2, including Friday’s win over No. 5 Mahar.
“They’re scoring a ton of goals,” Dils said. “I think they tied Taconic (0-0) maybe a week and a half ago, two weeks ago. So we know they’ve got some speed up top, and they’re going to pose a problem for us on Tuesday or Wednesday when we play them.”
