Proud To Be An Eagle: Northeast Girls Advance Soccer Program

Lots of teams have good seasons. Good seasons are all around.

Not every team has the most successful season in program history, defeats a vaunted archrival not once but twice, wins three playoff games, advances to a region final, galvanizes an entire school into a frenzy of spirited support and raises a program to heights never before achieved.

The latter team is the 2015 Northeast girls soccer team.

The Eagles had an historically good season this fall, posting an 11-4 record and advancing to the 3A East region final, the furthest the program has ever advanced in the region playoffs.

More importantly, it was a watershed campaign for an Eagles program that had taken its lumps for many years. The Eagles were winless for three years from 2010-2012, but they’ve since improved steadily, notching four wins in 2013, seven in 2014 and 11 this season.

It’s a transformation that head coach Scott Langlois knows required talent, hard work, confidence and an unwavering belief in teamwork.

“The secret to having a really successful team is they have to be talented coming in, which means you have to have club soccer players, and we do,” said Langlois. “The other side of that is, in any sport you can have a lot of talent, but unless they come together and play as a team, they’re not going to do well. They realized that two players can’t do this, three players can’t do this, the defense can’t do this. It’s got to be everybody. That’s what they worked really hard on all season.”

An inflection point came in Northeast’s 1-0 victory at Chesapeake on September 21 on Sarah Edmiston’s late second-half goal, the Eagles’ first win over the Cougars since 2006.

The Eagles celebrated that victory, and rightfully so, but they didn’t build it up too much.

“We never rested on a good win,” said Langlois, “and we never felt too bad for too long with our losses. It’s a constant learning process. We watched game film and improved on our mistakes. We just moved on.”

After concluding a successful regular season, ‘moving on’ became an extended act come playoff time, and of course the Eagles were matched up with the revenge-minded Cougars in the 3A East’s opening round. In that game, a hard-fought contest evenly matched between two good teams, Kaleigh Cassell broke a scoreless tie with an overtime game-winner that certified the Eagles’ mettle and proved the September victory was no fluke.

“Beating Chesapeake twice, I think the first time we beat them, the girls would go on Twitter, and everyone was saying they outplayed us or we got lucky,” said Langlois. “But when they beat them the second time in the playoffs, it was like yes, we are a team to beat, we didn’t get lucky.”

The playoff victory over Chesapeake stirred the Northeast students into a fever. The school and community joined in to support their team.

“When we beat Chesapeake [in the playoffs], people were like wow, these girls are actually good,” said team-leading scorer Yuli Arguera. “People actually care. They care about coming out and supporting their Lady Eagles. It feels great having fans watching, caring, supporting. It just helps.”

Suddenly getting high-fives and words of encouragement from teachers and peers in the hallways, the Eagles were not content just having fans; they gave the fans what they wanted to see. On November 3, the Eagles traveled all the way down to Stephen Decatur High School, just outside Ocean City, and defeated the Seahawks 2-1, breaking a 1-1 tie on Arguera’s second goal of the game with five minutes to play.

Decatur knocked the Eagles out of the playoffs in 2013 and 2014, and Langlois conceded the Seahawks were simply the better team each of those years.

This year was different.

“I really wasn’t nervous against Decatur, even when they tied it up,” said Langlois. “We were outshooting them and possessed the ball the whole game, just about. It was close score-wise, but we really outplayed them.”

Just two days later, the Northeast students packed a fan bus and traveled all the way down to Salisbury to see the Eagles dominate J.M. Bennett High School with a 3-0 win on two goals by Alley Fox and another by Arguera, with assists by Alyssa Siebers and Casey Lowry and three saves apiece for goalies Sarah Quasny and Samantha Baysic. Four-hundred and forty miles traveled. Five goals. Two road playoff wins. One undeniably special team, advancing emphatically to the region final.

“We were in the bus for 10 hours that week for three hours of soccer,” said Langlois. “We had way more fans than J.M. Bennett, and we beat them 3-0. The fans were cheering and hollering the whole game from start to finish. You couldn’t even hear J.M. Bennett’s fans.”

Said Quasny, a senior, “It was amazing to have a fan bus and have people come and support us. It was really the first time that had happened to me in a sport. The fact that our fans were that dedicated to bring even Northeast flags, it was really heartwarming that they cared that much.”

The Eagles were defeated handily by Huntingtown in the 3A East region final, 6-0, learning, like many very good teams have many times in the past, just how hard it is to get out of the region and into the state tournament.

But the accomplishments were delivered. The culture had shifted. The program is alive and well.

The contributions of many went into making the season so successful. The defense, led by Juliannah Fox, Rachel Chiurazzi, Makenzie Speigel and Evelyn Cronise and anchored by Quasny and Baysic, was a pillar of the team’s strength. Sophomore holding midfielder Kinlee Bruns “did an amazing job covering the entire field, shutting down opposing fast breaks and helping the transition play from defense to the forwards,” said Langlois. Alley Fox and Arguera provided scoring punch; Arguera led the team with 13 goals. Cassell, Michaela Lauterbach, Bianca Addivinola, Casey Lowry, Nicole Fish, Carley Crehan and Maddie Doss worked hard all season and played every position on the field. Seniors Edmiston, Siebers, Quasny, Holly Bowers and Megan Morgan provided leadership and strong play. Isabelle Montigny, Clair McCarriher and Hannah Kisielewski were pulled up from JV for the playoffs and all contributed to the successful postseason run. 

Matt Campbell coached the JV team and helped on the sidelines for varsity, while varsity assistants Michele Bodine, Lindsay Stuchinsky, Dorie Gedridge and goalie coach Todd Knock worked diligently to help train the players and improve the team as a whole.

Quasny said there was a noticeably raised intensity and focus during training this season.

“The intensity and focus in practice was way up, especially as we continued to win games. We had so much pride because we were doing so much better, and it just became more intense as we continued through the season,” she said.

Arguera, a junior, says the intensified work ethic and ongoing improvement will continue.

“Northeast is getting better, and I hope it keeps getting better as every year comes,” she said. “It feels good to be a Northeast soccer player now. Getting things done, going far, doing things that haven’t been done in a long time. Everybody on the team is proud to be an Eagle, and that’s how it should always be.”

Notes:

This fall, the Northeast girls soccer team challenged the Northeast field hockey team to a GPA contest. “We stress school work as hard as we do practice,” said Northeast girls soccer coach Scott Langlois. At stake: a pizza dinner paid for by the runner-up. At the end of the first marking period, the girls soccer team achieved an average GPA of 3.83, while field hockey produced a team GPA of 3.68. Commendable academic achievement by both teams for sure—but to the victor goes the pizza.