Newtown High School’s boys’ soccer team scored a 3-0 win at Weston in a South-West Conference clash, on Saturday, October 10.

Shane Gattey scored when he hooked in a corner kick, and James Carney and Jack Oltran also hit the back of the net for the soccer team’s fourth straight win, and fifth consecutive game without a loss. Against Weston, goalkeepers Zach Laros and Nick Beourgouis combined to make five saves in the team’s third shutout victory in its last four contests.

In their previous game, a 2-0 win over visiting Immaculate of Danbury, at Blue & Gold Stadium, on October 8, the Nighthawks used a pair of early strikes to seize the lead before hanging on. Owen Sampson and Elliot Bennett scored just 16 seconds apart, staking the Hawks to a two-goal edge only 1:29 into the action. And that was all she wrote.

“We’ve been talking all year about being a first-half team,” Newtown Coach Brian Neumeyer said. “I’m happy with the way the guys are working. We knew we had a really good group of kids. It’s taken us a little while, but we’re in a good spot in the season now.”

Neumeyer said the starting lineup has changed game by game due to a combination of the team’s depth and injuries.

“I think we’re really starting to figure out who we are,” senior captain and defender Forrest Weatherby said. “We’re learning to possess better.”

Weatherby, along with fellow captain James Cochrane, as well as Chris Rovelli, Brian Araujo, and Scott Martin have anchored Newtown’s stingy defense, which has held the last eight opponents to one or no goals.

“The outlook is pretty good for us for the rest of the season,” said Weatherby, whose Nighthawks carry a 7-2-1 record into a Tuesday, October 13 visit to Stratford (at Penders Field, beginning at 7 pm), before finishing the regular slate with five consecutive home matches.

The Nighthawks appear to have arrived at a forgiving point in the season; Stratford has just one win, and the next opponent, Kolbe Cathedral of Bridgeport, which visits Blue & Gold for a match under the lights on Thursday, October 15, at 7 o’clock, is winless.

Weston was a four-win team, and Immaculate had just one victory under its belts, but the Nighthawks have also earned some triumphs over some of the best in the South-West Conference, including handing Joel Barlow of Redding only its second defeat.

“We’ve shown that we can beat good teams in the conference,” Neumeyer said.