BANGOR, Maine — The Bangor boys soccer team picked an important time for a somewhat rare narrow victory.
The fourth-seeded Rams made an early score by Eli Clein stand up for just their third one-goal win of the season Tuesday evening, a 1-0 survival of Mount Ararat of Topsham in an Eastern Maine Class A quarterfinal.
“It’s a good win for us, the first really since Sept. 11 when we beat Hampden when we won a close game against a good team,” said Bangor coach Billy Shannon. “Hopefully now we can take this and springboard into the rest of the playoffs.”
The victory advances Bangor (10-2-3) to a semifinal scheduled for 6 p.m. Friday at top-ranked and undefeated Lewiston, now 14-0-1 after a 6-0 quarterfinal victory over Mt. Blue of Farmington on Tuesday.
Lewiston edged Bangor 2-1 in their lone meeting to date this fall on Oct. 10.
Mount Ararat, which played the Rams to a 1-1 regular-season stalemate on Sept. 26, ended its season with an 8-5-2 record.
The only goal of the rematch came just 7:16 into the first half when Clein received a long pass from Sam Huston fairly deep along the right wing, dribbled the ball back toward the middle of the field and left-footed a low shot from just outside the penalty area through a crowd that looked to deflect off a foot before trickling into the lower right corner of the net.
“We’ve been playing together for so long and [Huston] knows my playing style, that I’m always aggressive trying to get to the ball,” said Clein, a junior forward, “so we just take a chance and dump it in the back and I just happened to get there and it worked out.”
Indeed, familiarity was a major part of the game-deciding play as Huston launched a high, hard cross-field pass from the left wing just on the defensive side of midfield.
“I kind of figured Eli would be out wide,” said Huston, a senior back. “On the play before, I got the same type of ball but was a little weak with it, and [assistant] coach [Don] Erb was saying, ‘Sam, you’ve got to go long with it,’ so the next chance I got I just drove it long, and Eli was able to get it and score.”
Clein’s goal came on one of the few scoring chances of the first half for either team.
While Mount Ararat was able to generate more offensive opportunities after intermission — particularly with long balls over the defense to the likes of Robbie Small and Cole Guerin — a positional switch made before the match by Bangor that shifted senior Liam Harrigan from midfield to defense helped preserve the Rams’ sixth shutout victory of the fall behind six saves from junior goalie Stanley Clarke.
“I told our guys if our score stood then things would stay the same but that the next team to score was going to win the game,” said Shannon. “But we were fortunate enough that we stayed organized, limited their chances and managed to squeak that one out.”
Jon Roux made two saves in goal for Mount Ararat.
