Girls soccer team on the right track

by Eric Keppeler
Lewiston Porter Sentinel, October 7, 2006

The Lew-Port girls soccer team had plenty of questions heading into the 2006 season. They’ve found some of the answers they sought, and they’ve already equaled their victory total from last season.

But coach Mike Bollinger thinks they can do better.

“I thought we’d have won more league games by now,” Bollinger said. “We’ve still got some left and we want to win three out of four. Then I think we can make some noise in sectionals. We’ve played very well against the A teams, which is what we’ll see in the playoffs. There have been peaks and valleys, but I think we’ve been improving.”

The Lancers finished 3-9-3 last season in the Niagara Frontier League and 7-11-2 overall. This season, they sit at 3-7 in the NFL with four games to go after Thursday’s 1-0 win at Kenmore East.

Lew-Port is 7-7 overall.

“We’re definitely better than we were last year,” said senior co-captain Ashley Harbison, a four-year starter at midfield “We had a lot of young backs, and now they’re older and more experienced. We were even better when I was younger, but now we’re starting to get back up to where we used to be.”

The biggest question facing the team was in goal, where the graduation of all-star Caitlin Moreland left a gaping hole in the lineup.

Bollinger had a couple of good prospects in Lindsay Carr and Nikki Mokhiber, and he decided to give each of them a shot. The rotation ended when Carr suffered a concussion and now is sidelined indefinitely.

“We’ve been going with a rotation,” Bollinger said. “For a while they were both playing really well, and then for a while they were both struggling. We haven’t had a choice lately because Lindsay is out again, but Nikki has been playing really well for the last couple of games.”

For her part, the freshman Mokhiber enjoys the challenge.

“It challenges us more,” Mokhiber said Thursday after posting her first career shutout. “It feels really good to be a part of this. Lew-Port used to have a very good record all of the time and people used to be afraid to play against us. They were intimidated.”

The second question was how to solve a lack of offense. Scoring is up this season – better than last year, at any rate – but the Lancers now figure it can improve still more.

“We had a lot of young people on the team last year, and some of them didn’t really understand what needed to be done,” said senior co-captain Julie Bajor, a three-year starter at midfield. “Now that they’re returning this year, they’re a lot stronger than they were last year.”

They figure they still have a little bit of time to get things in order because the sectional playoffs are where they can do the most damage. Competing in the tough NFL against Class AA schools during the season, the Class A Lancers suddenly find themselves going up against schools their own size when the playoffs begin.

“Right now, we’re used to playing against the bigger schools,” said senior co-captain Emily Vantine, a three-year starter on defense. “When the playoffs start, we go down to teams our own size. Right now, the other schools have more of a talent pool to choose from, and we don’t get that many players to pick from. So when we play the smaller schools, they’re in the same boat as us.”

The Lancers have struggled in the playoffs in recent years. They beat Maryvale in the opening round of the sectionals and then fell to state semifinalist Grand Island, but they think they can change that this season.

“The last couple of years, we’ve finished low in the NFL and we had to start out against really high teams in the playoffs,” Harbison said. “This time, we’re higher than we have been, so we think we can go farther this time.”