NORTH ADAMS, Mass. – At times this fall, the Drury girls soccer team has had trouble getting going until the second half.
Thursday marked the start of a whole new season.
Megan McGrath scored in the third minute of the match, and the Blue Devils went on to a 3-0 win over Gateway in the preliminary round of the Division 5 State Tournament.
“I think they felt better about it,” Drury coach Syid Uqdah said. “It’s always better playing from ahead than playing from behind.
“It’s always encouraging when you score first, especially at home. You always want to protect your home field. I think they did good getting out of that slow start slump. Hopefully, going forward, they stay on that pedal, especially Saturday against Hopedale.”
No. 22-seeded Drury (10-8-1) will travel to No. 11 Hopedale (5-10-3) in the Round of 32 for a Saturday evening match.
The Blue Devils dominated possession in the prelim, keeping the Gators (6-7-2) penned in their end of the field most of the afternoon.
In fact, Uqdah’s only complaint was that Drury did not find the finishing touch as often as it could have.
“It’s encouraging [to score early], but we also missed a lot, too, so that’s discouraging,” he said. “We have issues in that 18, and it shows. We should have at least four or five more goals, but we forced some shots we shouldn’t have.
“We’re almost there.”
And on Thursday, Drury also ran into a hot goalkeeper.
Gateway sophomore Jayliana Rivera stopped 16 shots – 11 in the first half – to limit the damage for the Gators.
“She’s good, from never playing goalie to starting for two years, she’s good,” Uqdah said. “The push over the net, that was good. She made a lot of good saves.”
There was no stopping McGrath in the third minute of play, when she dribbled around two Gateway defenders in the middle of the field just outside the 18 and hit a right-footed rocket into the upper 90 to give Drury a 1-0 lead.
Rivera settled in and stood up to Drury’s pressure for the next 20 minutes before Abigail Percy made a run on the right wing and centered the ball for Madison Saunders, who hit a left-footed shot across the goal and inside the far post to make it a 2-0 game.
Drury dashed all hopes for a Gateway comeback midway through the second half, when Reagan Cornell teed up a corner kick from the left wing and bent it into the goal to cap the scoring.
Gateway’s best chance to get on the board came in the 67th minute, but its shot from about 20 yards out ended in a diving save from Brooke Bishop, who needed to make just three stops to earn the shutout.
The Blue Devils brought Bishop into the field for the last couple of minutes in an attempt to get her a goal in her last home game as a senior, but Drury could not generate a good scoring chance in the closing moments.
Now it has a chance to go at least as far as last year’s Drury squad went. In 2022, the Blue Devils pulled off a 1-0 upset on the road at Palmer in the Round of 32.
“We finished the regular season on a seven-game winning streak, and we lost to Monson [in the Western Mass semi-finals],” Uqdah said, referring to a Mustangs team that won Western Mass and held down the No. 2 seed in Division 5. “Playing the competition we’re playing, there’s always a chance. There’s nothing I have showed them or we worked on in practice that they aren’t ready for.
“It’s just them putting it together on that field and executing. They’re doing it. We’ve just got to do it again Saturday … and the next day after.”
