Natick girls soccer team 'so hungry' to return to state championship finals
NATICK – One mission. Ten minutes.
Considering the former, the coach says each game is its own. The team handles the latter.
Twin sisters Nicole and Lydia Proia teamed up to put Natick on the board early Tuesday, just two-and-a-half minutes into an evening soccer matchup with Framingham. No time to rest, but maybe breathe a little easier.
The Redhawks eventually added two more tallies.
One cause: Getting back to the season’s final game.
Natick won the program’s first state title on the Saturday before Thanksgiving in 2021, defeating a Hingham team that was undefeated when the day started. The shine hasn’t worn off.
“We have a lot of girls on the team this year that were involved in the state championship who are all so hungry to get back there,” said senior captain Maya Schwab after Tuesday’s victory.
Case in point: Megan Mela and Olivia Penn, a pair of freshmen on the ‘21 squad, both scored against Framingham.
One mission, one cause. Expect nothing, earn everything. Two team mottos with one common goal – another title run.
“That’s what we’re training for,” said senior captain Kaitlin LeBrun, one of the team’s top defenders along with Kendall Hacker, another pair of players from ‘21. “That’s our ultimate goal. Everything we do now is to lead up to that.”
But with just four seniors this fall, late-November success is hardly a guarantee.
“Our expectations are: we can’t just expect to be given anything because we’ve historically been a successful program,” said head coach Dave Wainright. “Every game’s going to be its own mission.”
Natick’s three first-half goals sink Framingham
Lydia Proia set up sister Nicole and the sophomore duo put Natick on the board just 2:24 into Tuesday’s match as the Redhawks improved to 3-1. The victory came four days after they blanked Wellesley, a team Natick failed to defeat in a pair of games last season.
Wainright continuously preaches the importance of the opening 10 minutes, and when Nicole Proia scored her second goal of the season while plenty of daylight remained at Memorial Field, the evening’s mission was well on its way to completion.
“It just sets the stage and momentum immediately picks up and theirs drops,” LeBrun said of the early tally. “If you keep it up there, you have the game in the bag.”
Penn (penalty kick) and Mela scored less than three minutes apart late in the first half for a comfortable lead. Framingham keeper Kaylee Faulkner and talented sophomore Ava Callahan helped keep Natick off the board in the second half.
Nicole Proia was denied a second goal when she tipped a ball past a charging Faulkner, only to have a hustling Callahan block her shot toward an otherwise unguarded net. (Callahan earlier cleared a shot off the goal line in the first half, also on an attempt from Nicole Proia).
Again, the quick start set the tone.
“We got out of the gates early, which was really nice for us,” Wainright said. “It takes a lot of weight off our shoulders and they play a little bit more loose. We’re still relatively young, and I think it speaks to the volume of experience that some of these younger players bring to the table this year.”
Natick ‘building off of last year’
Natick plays Thursday afternoon at Newton North (3-0-1), which is also coming off a win over Wellesley. The Redhawks have already had three games postponed due to storms, meaning a number of three-game weeks await them in October.
Natick has just one match scheduled for next week.
“It’s disrupted a little bit of the rhythm of the team and the development of where we should be at this time,” Wainright said, “so we feel like we’ve got a long way to go and a short time to get there.”
The Redhawks lost just three regular-season games last fall, but undefeated Bishop Feehan eliminated them in the quarterfinals. Seven seniors graduated. But the mission continues.
“It doesn’t feel like a new season,” Schwab said Tuesday. “It’s like we’re building off of last year.”
Tim Dumas is a multimedia journalist for the Daily News. He can be reached at tdumas@wickedlocal.com. Follow him on Twitter @TimDumas.
This article originally appeared on MetroWest Daily News: Natick High girls soccer on a 'mission' to state title return
