Roundup
Centaurs volleyball team
rebounds with good week
What a difference a week can make.
The Woodstock Academy volleyball team had it pretty rough the week before when it lost consecutive matches to Conard, East Lyme and Glastonbury.
Last week, it was the reverse as the Centaurs posted wins over Waterford, Norwich Free Academy and Newtown.
“We’ve been playing with the mindset that this is our last game, play like it’s a state championship every game. We’ve had the mentality to be tougher and I think that’s really helped us a lot,” said senior outside hitter Lily Bottone.
Newtown may have been a perfect example of that mindset. The Centaurs downed the Nighthawks 25-14 in the first set.
But the second set wasn’t going so well. Four service errors helped Newtown climb ahead, 19-16. Then, senior Izzy Mojica stepped behind the service line.
She rattled off the next seven points to put the Centaurs up, 23-20, and they went on to post the 25-23 victory.
“That was huge,” said coach Adam Bottone. “She gave us a good string. They were good, effective floats, they weren’t anything super-hard, they were just in and consistent which is what we want. We emphasize that as much as we can.”
In the decisive third set, Adam Bottone elected to go to Mojica again to open service.
Mojica got the first four points on the serve with help from Lily Bottone who had two of her 16 kills in an early run that saw the Centaurs build from a 4-0 to a 7-1 to a 9-2 early lead.
The Nighthawks did respond and closed to within four points at a coupled of junctures but the Lily Bottone-Sophie Gronski (26 assists at setter) kept them at bay as the Centaurs posted the 25-16 third set win.
The Centaurs had come into the week following the wake-up call with the three losses.
The Centaurs opened the week with a 3-1 victory over Waterford, taking the first two sets from the Lancers before dropping the third. A 25-15 victory in the third sent the Centaurs home happy with Lily Bottone leading the way with 12 kills and 11 service points while Cassidy Ladd had 19 digs and 10 service points and Mia Sorrentino added six kills.
Woodstock followed that up with a 3-0 victory over NFA which had given the Centaurs a little tussle earlier in the season in Norwich.
That win meant the Centaurs finished 5-1 in ECC Div. I and guaranteed themselves a share of the regular season title with East Lyme as both teams finished with identical records and split against one another. Gronski had 35 assists and five aces in the win over the Wildcats while Sorrentino had 14 kills and Lily Bottone 13. Ladd led the defense with 21 digs.
Cross-Country
The regular season, for the most part, is just about over for the boys’ cross-country team.
Now comes the fun part.
The Centaurs will join the remainder of the ECC at the league championship meet on Thursday afternoon.
“I want to see two guys up in the top five or six, I think both Christian (Menounos) and Colton (Sallum) can do that on the right day. I think Christian has a shot at winning,” coach Josh Welch said.
The Centaurs coach admits the No. 1 runner from East Lyme, Sean McCauley, is pretty strong and so is the top runner from Griswold, freshman Tycen LaBelle.
“I think we could be in top two or three, totally doable, I think we have a really good shot at it. I think we just have to fire on all cylinders and there are some serious hills,” Welch said.
Fortunately, the Centaurs do have a course which will prepare them for that kind of challenge.
Welch said the team would be going back to the Woodstock Fairgrounds on, at least, two more occasions to work the hills prior to the ECC championship.
“It’s exciting,” Welch said of the upcoming meets which also include the Class MM state championship Oct. 26, followed by the State Open championship Oct. 31.
“It’s fun, it’s stressful, there is heartbreak, I’m hoping more for the exciting and fun part but you have to love seeing the high-level competition and how your runners respond to it. There are more teachable opportunities in the next week or two than there are for much of the season prior,” Welch said.
The Centaurs had their final dual meet of the season on Tuesday and finished with a 22-37 loss to NFA.
But it does not put the final touch on the divisional records. The ECC championship meet has two components to it. The first is the overall championship but there is also the second meetings between divisional opponents which are scored.
It means the Centaurs could improve on their league standing which has them currently in third place with a 2-2 record behind East Lyme (4-0) and NFA (3-1).
Catching the Wildcats may be more than possible as the meet at Mohegan Park was not exactly what Welch wanted to see.
The majority of his team took some wrong turns along the way and that resulted in a second-place finish for Christian Menounos and a fourth-place for Colton Sallum.
The course, itself, was partly to blame for the miscues as NFA did not have any marshals on the course and was poorly marked.
Girls’ Cross-Country
Close. Very close. It could have been closer for the girls’ cross-country coach Joe Banas said of his team’s just falling short against NFA, 25-31, in their final dual meet of the season.
“Ella (Petersen) and Kira (Greene) both went off course. Hopefully, next year, (NFA) comes to us because we put an adult in every place where (runners) can go wrong,” Banas said.
According to Banas, the arrows on the course were a bit confusing and both Petersen and Greene took the wrong side of the 50/50 chance.
 Junior Isabel D’Alleva-Bochain finished third overall in 21 minutes, 37 seconds just seven seconds back of Helen Muench of NFA.
Olivia Tracy placed one NFA runner behind her teammate in fifth while Petersen was sixth and Greene eighth.
The Centaurs finished the dual meet season with a 3-3 overall record and were 1-3 in Div. I of the ECC.
It’s always different in team scoring with large meets and Banas thinks his fifth and sixth runners could finish better than some teams fourth and fifth runners.
The veteran coach is hopeful that D’Alleva-Bochain will finish in the top-10 and Tracy in the top 20, meaning he is hopeful that the Centaurs could finish in the top five overall. Banas continues to think Lyman Memorial will be in the mix for the overall title along with teams like Ledyard.
Boys’ Soccer
The goal is pretty simple. Win.
“We knew we had to win (Thursday) or we weren’t going to make (the state tournament). We knew coming in it was win or be done. We came in as hard as we could and knew we had to win this game,” senior Riley Wilcox said.
The Centaurs were dominant throughout but had to wait for two goals in the final 13 minutes before they could post a 2-1 win over Ledyard.
Woodstock outshot the Colonels 8-1 in the first half but could not find the back of the net.
“That’s kind of what the whole season has been like,” said coach Dave St. Jean. “We have opportunities, but just haven’t been able to put them away. At the end of the first half, with the wind, we knew we had to do something. It was great to see that ball come across.”
The Centaurs, who finished with seven corners to the Colonels’ one, finally cashed in on one with 12 minutes, 47 seconds left in regulation.
A corner from junior Trevor Gold got to Derek Rodriguez Arenas who put home his fifth goal of the season.
Just a little over four minutes later, the Centaurs were able to benefit from a call as a foul was called in the box against Ledyard and Woodstock was awarded a penalty kick.
Speaking of injuries, Wilcox has been one who has been beleaguered by them, missing the first four games and then another later in the season.
A foul just outside the box resulted in a free kick for Ben Crowe and he delivered a goal for Ledyard (4-5-4) with 45 seconds left.
It bettered the Centaurs record to 3-7-3.
St. Jean was hoping for better but the Centaurs lost a close one to Norwich Free Academy earlier in the week, 1-0.
The Centaurs need to win two out of their last three matches to qualify.
Prep Soccer
It was a good thing it was a holiday weekend.
The prep soccer teams made a nine-hour trek to Pennsylvania on Thursday and then extended that out to Ohio over the three-day weekend.
But the results made everything worth it as the Centaurs Prep 1 and 2 teams finished 4-0 between them.
That included a 2-0 win over Kiski School for the Prep 1 team on Sunday in Hudson, Ohio.
Kiski was the Prep Premiere League leaders with three wins in three outings and a 13-2 goal differential.
The two teams had to settle for a scoreless first half but the Centaurs got on the board first 10 minutes into the second.
Enoch Joseph scored his first goal of the season off an assist from Jeongbin Lee.
Joseph wasn’t the only one to get his first goal of the year.
The Centaurs had to rely on keeper Kevin Christensen and the defense to protect the one-goal lead until just five minutes were left in the contest.
That’s when Kiski School committed a foul in the penalty box and Dylan Payne was given the chance to convert the penalty kick.
He did so successfully, his first tally of the season, to give the Centaurs a little breathing room.
The win raised the Centaurs overall record to 6-0-2 and puts them in first place in the Prep Premiere League.
The Prep 1 team
David Cho scored what proved to be the game winner in the second half as the Prep 1 soccer team posted a 5-2 victory over Spire Academy Saturday.
Cho broke a 2-all tie with his tally and Jude Essuman followed with a pair of goals to guarantee the Centaurs the victory.
Xavhi DeRoza and Daion Swan DaSilva scored the first two goals of the match for the Centaurs with each assisting on the other’s goal.
DaSilva finished with two assists while Essuman, Cho, and Zander Tidwell added assists in the win.
Essuman now leads the team with seven goals and three assists in the first eight matches.
Prep 2 takes a pair on the road
The Prep 2 soccer team improved to 6-2-1 with a hard-fought 3-2 victory over Lake Forest Academy Saturday.
The Centaurs built the early 2-0 lead on goals from Nico Ochoa off an assist from Shihab Juman and Hae Sung Kim from Jacob Gollop. The game winner came off the foot of Tommy Broderick on an assist from Ozzie Pearman.
The teams left Woodstock for the holiday weekend early so that the Prep 2 squad could stop in Saltsburg, Penn., to play Kiski School under the lights on Thursday.
The Centaurs posted the 2-1 victory over their hosts.
Woodstock fell behind, 1-0, before team captain Nico Ochoa scored twice in the second half. Ochoa put home a right-footed rebound after a header by Obama Ngarambe was saved by the Kiski School keeper to tie the match.
Ochoa then won it with a left-footed boot off another rebound.
Marc Allard
Director of Sports Information
The Woodstock Academy

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