YARMOUTH – Lisbon senior goalkeeper Mike Wilkins would have been well within his rights to come off the field at Yarmouth High School Wednesday and complain that his hands were sore.
After batting away 24 shots on a chilly, wind-swept field and enduring the onslaught of 52 total Yarmouth offerings, some of which went wide of the cage but made the senior keeper move nonetheless, Wilkins had every right to be frustrated.
But he wasn’t.
The Clippers connected for five goals, upending upset-minded Lisbon 5-0 in a Western Maine Class B soccer semifinal. On the other end, Yarmouth did not allow Lisbon a single shot.
“We’re a resilient team,” said Wilkins. “Some games we’ll be on, some games we’ll be off. It depends on when we come out to play.”
While it would seem at the outset that the Greyhounds didn’t come out to play at all Wednesday, the fact that Lisbon, seeded sixth this postseason, even made it to Wednesday was a big accomplishment. A year ago, the Greyhounds won just one game. This season, they set a school-record with nine wins.
“I think our playoff game was when we played Maranacook and beat them 2-1,” said Lisbon coach Scott Barden.
“You come down here to this part of the state and you’re playing a different breed of soccer.”
Wilkins saw the lion’s share of the time between the iron last year, too.
“This was my first playoff win in any sport in high school,” said Wilkins. “The big thing is we had some players that couldn’t play last year and this year they did, and that made a big difference. No one expected us to be here, to go this far.”
Yarmouth took control early. Tim Murphy netted the Clippers’ first goal in the 15th minute on a 60-yard run, finishing with a shot that beat Wilkins low. One minute later it was 2-0 thanks to Logan Mather’s bullet from 15 yards.
“We’ve had 16 different kids score this year,” said Yarmouth coach Mike Hagerty. “Our leading goal-scorer only has five or six goals because we’ve got about 10 kids with four.”
Mike Evans tallied a pair early in the second half to put the game out of reach, and Francis Ellis finally capitalized on the last of his 15 shot at goal in the 28th minute of the second half to cap the scoring.
Yarmouth advances to play in the Western Maine Class B title game Saturday.
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