Newtown High School’s boys’ soccer team’s opponents have the challenging task of deciding who to mark closely, or when to apply a double team strategy. Goal scoring, for the Nighthawks, has come from all over the field as 13 players have found the back of the net this fall.

In a 6-1 win at Stratford on October 13, six players scored; in a 4-0 blanking of visiting Kolbe Cathedral of Bridgeport, at Blue & Gold Stadium on October 15, four players scored.

The team’s starting lineup has changed on a game-by-game basis, making it a true team effort as the Nighthawks, coming off a 2-0 win over visiting East Lyme on October 17, and a 2-1 edging of visiting Notre Dame-Fairfield, on October 20, carried an 11-2-1 record into their final two regular-season games.

“Everyone is contributing with this group,” Newtown Coach Brian Neumeyer said. “The goals are coming from different places.”

In the end, when it comes to wins and losses, a goal is a goal and it doesn’t matter who scores if the tallies contribute toward a victory, but an advantage to having so many threats to put a ball into the net is that if one player doesn’t come through on a given day, another is just as likely to step in and score, Neumeyer said.

“We don’t have a goal scorer, but we’re scoring goals — we’re finding a way. It’s really putting pressure on the other team’s defense,” the coach said.

Newtown netted 31 goals in their first 14 games, and has averaged about seven corner kicks per contest, Neumeyer said.

This distribution isn’t unexpected, but it is unusual, says Neumeyer, whose teams traditionally have one or two go-to players to finish chances on offense.

“It’s always good to be able to get scoring from different areas,” Newtown captain and defender James Cochrane said. “From the back all the way up, we knew from the start we weren’t going to be relying on one or two goal scorers. It was going to be everybody — it was going to be a team effort.”

In the victory over Kolbe, seven players inked their names once each on the score sheet. Omar Rodriquez, Josh Houle, James Carney, and Cochrane all scored, and Paul O’Leary, Brian Araujo, and Owen Sampson had assists.

The Nighthawks found themselves in a rare scoreless deadlock at halftime before erupting on offense. Neumeyer says the team strives to score early in games, and had done so almost every other game this fall.

Newtown, through the Notre Dame game, has won eight straight, and gone unbeaten in nine consecutive games. Against East Lyme, Elliot Bennett scored on a penalty kick and Sampson headed home the other goal, off a pass from Cochrane, both in the opening half. In the Notre Dame game, Jack Oltran scored in the final seconds of the opening half, and Shane Gattey converted off a scramble in the second half for the game-winner.

In addition to the offense doing its part, the defense — led by captains Cochrane and Forrest Weatherby — along with the goalkeeping combination of Zach Laros and Nick Bourgeois, have held the opposition to 11 goals.

Battling for one of the top spots in the South-West Conference playoffs, the Nighthawks were slated to host Bethel on October 22, at Blue & Gold Stadium, beginning at 7 pm. Newtown will close out the regular season on Monday, October 23, when Joel Barlow of Redding visits Blue & Gold Stadium for a 3:45 start. This is a nonconference game that counts only in the state standings; the Hawks edged Barlow 2-1 in their SWC clash earlier in the month.