The Newtown High School Boys Soccer team kicked off the regular season at Blue and Gold Stadium on September 10 with a 4-0 win over the Bunnell Bulldogs. The Nighthawks played a strong game on both sides of the ball as standout captains Blake Jarvis and Clay Gattey led the offensive charge all night long. The defense also proved stingy as strong defenders junior Jamie Cochran and senior John Carlson, among others, stopped most of the Bulldog penetration throughout the game.

The Nighthawks had many chances the whole night, particularly in the first half when players made continuous efforts to find teammates streaking up the field. The goal of the night came moments in, when Jarvis took a shot from about 45 feet out that struck the back of the net. From there on out, Newtown had control of the momentum and wouldn’t let it go.

In the win, Jarvis scored a game-high two goals, one assisted by senior Mike Cook and the other by Gattey. Also getting into the scoring action was Gattey himself, when he stole a pass from a Bunnell defender and put the ball in the net to make it 3-0 with 32 minutes to play in the second half. The last score of the game came from Cook after he got a nice pass in front of the goal from Gattey, 16 minutes into the second half.

Hawks’ junior goalie Nick Bourgeois was not tested too often in the second half, but made nice saves early and often in the first portion of the game. After that, the defense settled in and the Bunnell offense had little to no luck getting near Bourgeois again.

“Be the first to every ball. That’s going to be kind of our mantra going forward,” Coach Brian Neumeyer said about the defense. “If we can win balls, especially in the back and be clean, we can be successful.”

As for the offensive surge, Gattey and Jarvis dominated possessions and always seemed to be where the action was.

“We just tried to dribble penetrate constantly and we looked for each other the whole time. Really, the whole night we would just pass to each other and good things happened,” Gattey said.

The group as a whole is just learning how to mesh after several players graduated a year ago, but putting on a display like the Nighthawks did against Bunnell stands to help them feel confident going into the rest of the season.

“We were successful in terms of we won the game, but we’re still a little bit away from where we want to be as a team,” Neumeyer said. “The effort was there and we’re going to get to where we want to get to. So we will be a little bit better soon.”