Mashpee Boys’ Soccer Share South Shore League Title

By: Rich Maclone
Published: 11/02/12

 Ed Furtek summed up last week pretty well for the Mashpee High School boys’ soccer team when he said, “It was a bit of a weird week.” The Falcons lost for the first time in weeks, which was bad. However, Cohasset knocked off East Bridgewater, allowing the Falcons to share in the South Shore League regular season title, which was good.

The Falcons found out on Wednesday that they have one of the best seeds that they’ve ever had in the Division III South state tournament, the No. 3 spot, which is good. They also may have the toughest road to the finals of any of the top four seeds, which is bad. Last Friday, the Falcons remained in the driver’s seat for the SSL championship after knocking off Cohasset, at home, by a 4-2 score behind a superb showing from Nate Peterson. The senior scored three goals and assisted on another in the game as he got one in the eighth minute, one in the 23rd and another in the 42nd, putting his team on top, 3-0. CHS got one back, but then Peterson set up Romeo Grey to make it 4-1, icing the win. Cohasset scored a meaningless goal late in the contest to account for the final score.

Things didn’t seem like they could be going any better, and then Sunday rolled around. The day before Hurricane Sandy left her mark on the northeastern United States, Mashpee was already dealing with a maelstrom of bad luck against Norwell. The Clippers scored two goals in the first 10 minutes on a pair of shots that both hit the goal post and rang in. They added a penalty kick late in the contest as they won, 3-0. “We pushed it, but things just weren’t meant to be. They just weren’t going our way that day,” Furtek said. “Hopefully that means we’ve gotten all of that out of our systems.”

Mashpee left their home field knowing that they’d need a lot of help, in the form of a Cohasset win over EBHS, to share the league championship. It wasn’t likely to happen but, as Furtek said, Sunday was a strange day. Cohasset pulled off the upset of the Vikings, allowing the Falcons to take down a share of the SSL title after a 15-3 season.

“When (Cohasset) left here on Friday, we were telling those guys that they had to help us out and beat East Bridgewater on Sunday. We thought it was so that we could win it outright, but they came through for us, and they said they would,” Furtek said. Mashpee now advances to the tournament where it will open up postseason play on Sunday, at 1 PM, on its own field. Furtek said that, with the Patriots enjoying their bye week this Sunday, he hopes a lot of locals will come out to Mashpee High to cheer on the boys. They’ll be facing either 14th-seeded Cardinal Spellman (10-6-3) or No. 19 Holbrook (8-7-2) in that game. After that, Hanover (11-3-2), which also has a first-round bye, would appear to be the most likely candidate for a second-round opponent. Furtek said that he did not know much about either Spellman or Holbrook, but he will find out. The coach said that he plans on scouting their first-round game this afternoon, an opportunity that the first-round bye his team earned affords him.

While the wins and losses over the last few days have been a roller coaster of emotions, a few things that were nothing but good news came out of the South Shore League meetings this week. MHS had four players named to the league All-Star team as Grey, Peterson, Scott Matoian and Dylan Shute all made the cut. Grey finished the season with a team-high 21 goals and nine assists. Peterson had the most overall points on the team, collecting 19 goals and 15 assists. Matoian had seven goals and 10 assists while Shute played a superb brand of defense for the Falcons all year long. Both Grey and Peterson were also named to the All-Eastern Massachusetts team for their exploits as seniors. Grey was named the league’s top overall player for the season. Peterson also earned a spot on last week’s Boston Globe Players of the Week team, after a week that saw him score six times and collect three assists. Topping it all off, the Falcons also got another award that Furtek was most pleased with.

The Mashpee boys’ soccer team won the South Shore League’s Sportsmanship Award as a team. “That just says a lot about the way that you play as a team and the respect that others have for you,” the coach said. “It was one of our goals at the start of the season, along with winning the league title. The other is to have the best team GPA (at MHS) for the fall, so we’ve gotten two out of three (goals) so far,” he said. And another big goal is a deep run in the state tournament. They hope to make their first step toward making that happen on Sunday.

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