Nashua North field hockey blanks Manchester to end winless streak (video)

NASHUA – The seniors on the Nashua High School North field hockey team knew Wednesday night was now or never.

In the last game of the regular season, it was their last chance to do something no Titans team had done since they were all in elementary school.

North scored midway through the third quarter and held on to that lead until adding an insurance goal in the final minute, as the Titans got a 2-0 win over Manchester at Stellos Stadium for the program’s first victory since Sept. 18, 2017.

Jordin Lopez scored on a penalty corner with 7:50 remaining in the third quarter – one of nine corners for the Titans on the night – to give her team the lead and Anna Foley knocked in a feed from Katelin Monroe with 34.5 seconds left.

“I’m so happy,” North senior co-captain Savanna Basford said. “To lose for four years straight and win on senior night, it’s poetic.”

It had been a little more than four years since the Titans (1-15) had a result other than a loss. Midway through the 2021 season, North played to a scoreless tie against Merrimack, putting the losing streak at 57 games.

But it had been 121 games since the last time the Titans came out with a win.

“It’s amazing,” North coach Kat Simula said. “It means the world to them. They just like to play and have fun. I came in (Wednesday) knowing it was going to be a very competitive and equally matched game. They played their hearts out. I was nervous for a little bit because (Manchester) was running to the ball and moving it. I was hoping we’d come out with a win, of course, but you never know.”

Simula just wrapped up her third season as North’s head coach, and from the start of the preseason, she could see that this group was different than the first two. Now the Titans have to figure out how to keep that momentum going, despite graduating nine seniors.

“That’s going to be a big hit for us next year, but we’re doing everything we can,” the coach said. “We’re building a youth program at the YMCA. We’re trying to get these girls to play more year-round. They need to get their stick on the ball more than just coming day one of preseason, and they know that. Next year will be another challenge for us, but that’s OK. We’ll grow from that.”

The Titans did also have seven juniors on the roster this year, including Lopez and co-captain Maddie Dratch, and with the help of this year’s seniors, they plan to be involved with trying to get the youth program off the ground.

“We’ve all been on the same team for a long time,” Lopez said. “We played middle school together, too. It’s been from the people who were older than us, the seniors who have graduated, it trickles down and sets a kind of attitude. It doesn’t matter how many games you lose, if you put your heart on the field, that’s all that matters.”

For one final game, all that heart turned into the result they’ve been looking to get for so long.

“There was a lot on the line and I’m glad we did it,” Dratch said. “We’ve worked really hard for this. We keep getting (opposing) coaches saying they’ve never seen our team this strong. We’ve worked our butts off to get here and it couldn’t be better.”

For Manchester (0-16), the loss ends a winless season for the Kings, but coach Abby Yerrington saw positives throughout the year.

“Not the season we hoped for,” she said. “But regardless of the scoreboard, every game, the girls still had a positive attitude after each (game), which was a good thing to see. They had a lot of fun.”

Yerrington, who coached the Central-West co-op for one season in 2023, was an assistant coach last season in the first year of the co-op between Memorial and Central and took over the program this season.

A year ago, a plan was put in place to try to keep interest in the sport and lines of communication open at both schools.

“How we structure the team, since we had three seniors, we had three captains,” Yerrington said. “But then we also have, a tier below, we have a leadership team. We have one girl from Central and one girl from Memorial.

“If girls aren’t comfortable going to the captains, they can go to the leadership team. They can go to someone who is on the same level as them. It’s gone well.”