POLAND — Poland Regional High School sisters Emily and Sarah Bolduc were happy to have a 3-0 win over Traip Academy on Wednesday. That doesn’t mean they were happy with the score.

“I was disappointed with 3-0,” said Emily, a senior midfielder. “I thought we could have done so much more. A little disappointing, but we’ll take the win.”

Sarah, a sophomore forward, scored the first two goals, assisted on the first by her older sister, in the first half. Emily added the capper in the second half as the Knights rolled to their second win in the first three games of the season. Poland coach Brant Remington is glad that they wanted more.

“That’s good, because it means that they’re hungry. They want more goals,” he said. “There were times when they felt a little flat, and in the second half we had a couple of real close ones.”

Indeed. Sarah Bolduc just missed on a couple of chances for a hat trick in the second half. The Knights outshot the Rangers (2-3), 19-8, for the game.

“What I like about this group is they can finish, and if they don’t finish, it upsets them,” Remington said.

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Sarah Bolduc used her head to finish a nice crossing pass from her sister, knocking the ball through a narrow opening between the left post and Traip keeper Lynne Moore for a 1-0 lead with 4:55 left in the first half.

“We were working hard the whole game. The ball was mainly on their end. So it was definitely long overdue,” Emily Bolduc said.

“Emily’s always getting her crosses across. It’s just really up to us to finally finish them, and we did,” Sarah said.

Moore made a nice stop to deny Emily Bolduc two minutes later, but with time winding down in the half, Sarah Bolduc split the defense on a breakaway, carrying the ball in from about 25 yards out, then tapping it to the left of Moore as the keeper came out of the net to challenge her.

“I was looking to see if anyone was beside me, but once I saw the goalie come out, I kind of just knew. I needed to time it right,” Emily Bolduc said.

“If you look at the 10 goals we’ve scored in the two wins, all of them are real good quality,” Remington said. “It’s fun to watch. Garbage goals are great because they’re going to add on to your score, but when you can get good quality goals, you’re doing something right.”

Poland goalkeeper Haley Whitworth made three fine stops in the second half to preserve the shutout, the best coming on an Emily Hartley bid that she deflected and scooped up the rebound just before a hard-charging Ranger could punch it home.

Otherwise, the Knights’ revamped defense kept the pressure off Whitworth to post their second shutout of the season.

“We lost a couple of key players from last season, so we’ve got some girls in some new positions,” Remington said. “Jessie Quint moved back into the sweeper spot midway through the first half. She’s been used to playing on the outside. (Lindsay) Theriault, we moved her up to center-mid. She’s used to playing more in a defensive role. Kylie Martin on the outside is playing a lot more minutes than she did last year. So they’re starting to get their defensive legs and figure things out. Two shutouts, you can’t complain about that.”


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