Auburn, ME - The weather was perfect, there was a huge home crowd on hand, the Mustangs were rested and ready, feeling that this would be their year. It was not to be. The Central Maine v Southern Maine matchup has turned into a classic and this one gave the crowd what they came for……almost. In the end, after an exciting, well played back and forth game, the Mustangs would suffer another first round playoff exit at the hands of their rivals in South Portland, ending their season.
The opening minutes saw both teams come out with high energy but lack of control, likely due to nerves, resulting in a lot of out of bounds balls from both sides. But the teams settled in and began to play. The Mustangs struck first in the 8th minute when forward Natalie Tracy (Oakland, ME) won a ball from the Seawolves defense, took it to goal and put the shot past the Southern Maine keeper to put Central Maine up 1-0 which got the big crowd going. The Seawolves would strike back however just past the 21-minute mark when an Emilienne Biddings-Augustine pass found Paige St Pierre alone on the right side of the Central Maine net and Southern Maine was back in the game. It looked like the game would remain knotted up at one apiece but with 20 seconds to go in the half, a Seawolves direct kick by Desiree Veilleux found the back of the net to give Southern Maine a 2-1 lead going into the half time break.
Both teams came out at half time with the same energy they started with and the Mustangs were focused on getting back in the game. The end to end play continued for most of the half but over the final fifteen minutes Central Maine found another gear and pressured the Seawolves defense but couldn't break them. The game ended with a 2-1 Southern Maine win with the Seawolves advancing to the Yankee Small College Conference while the Mustangs end their season and begin to focus on next year.
Afterwards, Mustangs Head Coach Rob Rodriguez commented "this was the one matchup that we were most concerned about because our two teams play with such high energy against each other that it only takes one or two mistakes to potentially decide the game. We will go back and watch the game video when enough time has passed that we can do it from a purely analytical viewpoint, taking the emotion out of it and I think the players will see that it was just a combination of a few very little things that added up over 90 minutes that prevented us from getting more scoring opportunities. It was a well-played game by both teams, neither of whom deserved to have their season end but that's the excitement of college sports and it's what we play for."
