HAMLETS THIRD IN CHAMPIONSHIPS OF NORTH AMERICA

The best 12 youth soccer teams in each age-sex group in the United States and Canada, many of them direct affiliates of professional and semi-professional adult teams in the two countries, come together each year to play for the North American championship. This year the tournament was at the University of Southern Florida at Tampa, and the champions of the twelve regional divisions of North America came together there 18-21 November, 2005. The winner of the Northeastern Region (New England, Eastern New York, and Eastern Canada) in the Under 14 Girls division was the Black Watch Alliance coached by the Hamlets coach Seth Coulter of Sutton and playing in the Super Y League from April to August. Out of the 20 players on the squad, fifteen traveled to Florida, five of them Hamlets also playing in the Mass. Premier League: Erin Ronan (Millbury), Erika Annis (Sutton), Anna Gallerani (Charlton), Courtney Wood (Whitinsville), and Michelle Laramee (Shrewsbury). The Black Watch teams are composed of players from four of the top Massachusetts Premier clubs: South Coast Scorpions (South Shore), NOVA (Bristol County & Rhode Island), Crusaders (Plymouth County & Cape Cod) and the Fuller Hamlets S.C. (Worcester County), and they play teams as far away as the Hudson Valley (New York), Ottawa (Canada), and the central Maine coast. Hamlets players participated on three teams in this first year of the Black Watch Alliance in New England, placing 6 girls on the Under 14s, 7 on the Under 17s (2 of whom played for the regional Olympic Development team) and 3 boys on the Under 16s.

In Florida the Hamlets on the Northeastern champion team played their first game against the Southeastern champion, Georgia (Atlanta). On the televised international stage they fell behind 2-0 in the first, nervous, ten minutes but settled down and rallied to make it

2-2 at the half, and, with many chances and the clear territorial advantage in the second half they deserved to win. But the game ended in a 2-2 tie.

In the second game against Central Canadian champions, Alberta (Calgary), they outplayed their opponents for long stretches of the game but came away the losers by the only goal. In retrospect this team was their weakest opponent, and had they won this game they would have made the final. They saved their best game for the California Mustangs,

3-time California State champions, whom they beat in a rugged but well-played game 2-1. In the final game against the Western Canadian champions, they beat British Columbia (Vancouver) 3-1 to finish third in North America with a 2-1-1, seven points record. They were third also in goals for (seven) and goal difference (plus 2).

While their team-mates were playing in the international North American championship in Florida, the other 13 players on the Hamlets Under 14 Girls were being forced to play a playoff game for survival in the First Division of Mass Premier as the 7th placed team (out of 10) in the Fall First Division versus the second-placed team in the Second Division, Winchester. They had to do this without their goalkeeper, Erin Ronan, star left fullback Courtney Wood, two starting midfielders (one had to play in goal) and one forward. This near debacle in scheduling resulted from the arrogant intransigence of two monolithic and insensitive bureaucracies.

The first of these, the institution that does more than any other to cripple the progress of soccer in Massachusetts, is the MIAA. Dependent as high schools are on the coaching and training done at the club level by MYSA and MAPLE teams, the MIAA, despite so- called gentlemen's agreements that they would not schedule high-school playoff games on Sundays in the fall when many high school players have critical dub games, continues to schedule Sunday afternoon playoff games. This happened when Millbury High School lost 4-1 to eventual state high school champions, Nipmuc. Hamlets' splendid goalkeeper Erin Ronan, and their top central midfielder Katie Nasuti and their parents were presented with an impossible dilemma by this thoughtless MIAA scheduling on a day when the players' presence in the Hamlets starting lineup could well have ensured a victory that would have guaranteed a slot in the Mass Premier First Division in the Spring and when Nipmuc's heavy victory over the Millbury team, with or without Ronan and Nasuti, was a foregone conclusion. For the parents and players it was, in the vernacular of my native Lancashire in England, "Hobson's Choice", which is no choice at all, given the MIAA-backed coercion reinforced by social, localistic pressures of peers. Two other Hamlets players were forced by similar circumstances to miss the club game against a team below them in the league and the expected happened. A loss that would not otherwise have happened dropped the Hamlets from sixth to seventh place, forcing them into a playoff with Winchester on the very weekend that critical players were missing in the North American Championship in Florida.

Here again the main characteristic and problem of bureaucracies reared its ugly head-the unwillingness and inability to change rigid rules written for everybody in the face of compelling reasons to make exceptions in exceptional circumstances. Despite the pleas of MYSA Hall-of-Famers and some of the longest-serving officials of the MYSA and MAPLE, the playoff scheduled on the Astroturf at Holliston "must go on."

Fortunately, with the Hamlets coach Seth Coulter absent with the Black Watch team in Florida, the founding and previous coach, Steve Codner, knew the team very well and was available to guide the 13 players (8 starters) through the playoff. With star midfielder Katie Tupper forced to play in goal, and with critical players missing elsewhere, the strategy was to shore up the defense and go with a 4-5-1 formation, and to deny Winchester serious shots on goal, and hope for a counterattack or two in which sole striker Kelsey Jarosz might steal a goal. The fail-safe course would be to win on penalty kicks, a team strongpoint, particularly as back-up 'keeper Tupper was thought to be a better shot-stopper than the Winchester 'keeper.

The defense led by captain Heather Dziembowski admirably backed by Despina Proko and by Brittany Rotatori, who filled in splendidly for Courtney Wood, completed their part of the team bargain by allowing only one good shot on goal in the 70 minutes of regulation time and 20 minutes of overtime. Kathryn Beall and Katie Nasuti were titanic in the midfield, courageously aided by the injured Caitlyn Labonte, and by two players-Moreen Raja and Liz Fernandes, who grasped the opportunity created by the absence of starters to show their talents in the outside midfield slots for 65 minutes.

In the penalty-kicking decider after the 90 minutes of open-field play left the teams at 0-0, the onus shifted to the Hamlets' experience, and to their determination in the face of MIAA injustice and MAPLE intransigence. Goalie hero Katie Tupper saved Winchester's first penalty shot and captain Heather Dziembowski gave the Hamlets a 1-0 lead with a powerful shot. The Winchester score in the second stanza was matched by Kelsey Jarosz's cool strike for the Hamlets. Hamlets 2-1. The Hamlets missed the third kick as did Winchester. Still 2-1. Goalie Tupper made a great save to deny Winchester's fourth attempt, and amid wild celebrations Kendra Woudenberg slashed in the winner. Hamlets, the victors 3-1: The fifth kick not needed.

With a never-to-be-forgotten weekend in Tampa and in Holliston, and with Katie Tupper the heroine of the piece, the Hamlets got what the faceless bureaucracies nearly denied them, glory in the South and North, and a place among the Big Eight teams in the state, come April 2006. An epic win for a team that has overachieved when it needed to do so in a season with which the players cannot help but feel well satisfied.