Newtown High Booters Look For Consistency As Tough Foes Await

By Andy Hutchison

STRATFORD — Marc Kenney was not happy. The Newtown High School girls’ soccer coach watched his team beat Stratford 2-0 and improve to 7-0-1, but Kenney said his team will have to play at a much higher level in key upcoming South-West Conference tilts to have success and be in position to make a playoff run.

“We played horribly,” Kenney said after Newtown went to Stratford’s Short Beach field and beat a team that had allowed a combined 15 goals in its previous two games and is 0-5-1 thus far. “I think we need to start to be responsible for ourselves. We need to take the initiative no matter who the opponent is.”

Even the really good teams — at all levels — have tough stretches or poor games from time to time, but the NHS coach does not want his team to fall into any sort of slump with the way the schedule unfolds this month.

“It’s not a good time for us to be playing poorly,” said Kenney, whose squad — after what should be an easy game against Notre Dame-Fairfield on Friday — will visit Masuk (unbeaten through the middle of this week) on Saturday.

Other big games still on the schedule are an October 10 game under the lights at Blue & Gold Stadium at 7 pm and back-to-back games against New Milford and Masuk at home October 20 and 22 to close out the regular campaign.

“Any one of those teams can beat us. These teams are gunning for us,” Kenney said.

Newtown, meanwhile, is gunning for its first SWC crown and has to be considered a serious threat in the conference when the team is at its best.

“We need to start realizing how good we can be,” Kenney said. “We’re playing down to teams’ levels.”

On the other hand, Newtown has played well against tougher teams thus far. NHS blanked Bethel 2-0 at home on Saturday. Ally Modzelewski and Tania Domingos scored goals, Monica Warek and Sara Attanasio had assists and goalkeeper Emily Kluga made three saves in that win. “That was a polar opposite of [the Stratford game]. We played really, really well against a Bethel team that played hard.”

Against Stratford, Kasey Schulz assisted goals scored by Jen Brewer and Domingos.

From the season’s start, Kenney expected better overall competition from his SWC counterparts, which he said are significantly improved across the board. The coach also had, and still has, high expectations for his team, which returned eight starters from last year’s undefeated-in-the-regular season team.

“It’s been a season of peaks and valleys. The peaks have been really, really good and the valleys have been really, really bad,” Kenney said. “If things don’t change soon, we’re going to be in for a very rough ending.”