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# Seniors draw inspiration from Milford girls soccer's last championship team
- URL: https://www.nh-highschoolsports.com/seniors-draw-inspiration-from-milford-girls-soccers-last-championship-team/
- Published: 2018-11-03T17:00:45.000Z
- Updated: 2018-11-03T17:00:45.000Z
- Description: Meg Sawyer remembers exactly where she was on the first weekend of November in 2012. The Milford High School senior co-captain was at Southern New Hampshire University, watching the Spartans win their last girls soccer championship. So were fellow co-captains Colette Urda, Ashleigh Matsis and Katie
- Author: Joe Marchilena
- Tags: Division II, championship, girls soccer, Hanover, Milford, playoffs, #wp, #wp-post, #Import 2026-08-18 04:44

Meg Sawyer remembers exactly where she was on the first weekend of November in 2012.

The Milford High School senior co-captain was at Southern New Hampshire University, watching the Spartans win their most recent girls soccer championship.

So were fellow co-captains Colette Urda, Ashleigh Matsis and Katie Lorden, and probably many other members of this year's team.

They remember watching the Spartans knock off rival Souhegan in a 2-1 contest, a game in which then-senior Morgan Andrews scored both goals to help Milford to the win.

"I just remember always looking up to everybody in that grade," Sawyer said. "Those seniors were so strong, they were my role models growing up.

"I remember going to that game. I remember watching that game and thinking ‘I know I’m going to get there some day, my team is going to do that.’ It was incredible to watch those girls and learn from them and aspire to be like them."

Now Sawyer's team has a chance to do that - win a championship of its own for Milford, as the sixth-seeded Spartans will take on No. 5 Hanover at 12 p.m. on Sunday in the Division II title game at Stellos Stadium in Nashua.

Like the seniors on that team, which also included Dina Pitsas, Kendra Bonczar and Brittney White, this year's group has been playing together for a long time, and won championships of their own in middle school. But unlike that 2012 team, there's no player who stands out above the rest.

"We’ve played together for a while," Matsis said. "In middle school, we won the championship two years in a row together. We knew we wanted it this year. Throughout the whole season, we’ve been working. Not one person gives up and it’s a team thing. It’s not one person who leads the whole team. When we show up to the field, it’s not one person against a whole team."

While all four captains were already playing soccer before attending that championship game, they all agree Andrews had an influence on wanting to play for Milford and wanting to be successful. Andrews, who was a captain on the U-17 National team that played in the World Cup in 2012 and was Gatorade's National Female Athlete of the Year as a senior, was - and still is - a presence among the youth programs in town.

"They were all doing the Kicks for Cans fundraiser that (Andrews) did," Milford coach Russ Matthews said. "They were all invested in anything she went and did, they were all there, every single one of them."

And Andrews has still been there for them, even attending the Spartans' preliminary-round game against John Stark.

"How involved Morgan stays with our community, and soccer, especially, she’s always been there," Lorden said. "I remember watching that championship game, seeing those girls play and the way they loved the game and each other."

Lorden sees many of the same attributes in this year's team. While the 2012 team had overcome a slow start that saw Andrews miss a handful of games while playing in the World Cup, this year, the Spartans had to battle back from a 2-2-3 finish to the regular season.

"We had a rough patch," she said. "We were winning games and then we hit this bump where we were either losing or tying games. We knew our goal and our jobs, and it came down to execute and working together.

"We have an amazing chemistry that just adds to that. I think I finally realized this was our year our first game of the season. We were just connecting pass after pass and everything flowed so well. I had this gut feeling that I knew this was going to be a good season."

Just one more game remains, and regardless of the outcome, Matthews expects it to be a good one.

"I think it’s going to be fun," the coach said. "It should be a good game. Hanover is always a team that moves the ball. They’re sound. We haven’t seen them, so it will be interesting."