By Mark Carpenter
People’s Defender
The 2022 season came to a painful end for the North Adams Green Devils boys soccer squad on October 26 in a thrilling Southeast District Division III district championship game played on the turf at Piketon High School. After falling behind by three goals in the second half, the Devils mounted a furious comeback to send the game into overtime, only to fall on a late OT score by the Northwest Mohawks that gave the Hawks the district title.
Both teams saw scoring opportunities go by the wayside early, with some valiant play in goal by North Adams’ Trey hoop on a number of Northwest corner kicks. The Mohawks broke the scoring ice at the 26:12 mark of the first half when a pass from Evan Mitchell resulted in a goal for Gavin Lute-Defoe that resulted in a 1-0 Northwest advantage.
Ten minutes later (16:01) the Mohawks’ stretched the lead to two and it was Lute-Defoe again to give Northwest a 2-0 lead at the half.
With 28:22 left in the game, the Hawks looked to seal the deal as a goal by Jay Jenkins gave them a seemingly insurmountable 3-0 lead. But no one passed that information on to the Green Devils.
the booming leg of junior Cody Hesler is a terrific weapon for the Devils and a long ball from Hesler ended up in a goal by junior Gage White that gave North Adams a little life, but they still stared at a two-goal deficit.
That little bit of life turned into a tsunami of green as the Devils were energized by the White score. With 15:15 to play, the Devils’ leading scorer, junior Hunter Brown, scored to make it 3-2 and then just three minutes later Brown snick one into the net from the left side and in the blink of an eye, a 3-0 game had turned into a tie game with momentum shifting the North Adams way. With each touch and possession having extreme importance, the action got a little chippy but no one was able to score over the game’s final 12 minutes, setting up a 15-minute sudden death overtime period.
The physical action continued as the overtime progressed and it looked more and more like a second overtime was in store as the clock would down under three minutes. Then disaster struck for the Devils. On a play that might have been called offsides on the Mohawks but wasn’t. Northwest’s Jenkins got loose down the right side and was able to boot one into the net to give his team the district title with the 4-3 overtime triumph.
We had three keys coming into the game,” said North Adams assistant coach Duncam Hesler. “Continuity, Perseverance and will. Our boys played hard and achieved all three, but just got an unlucky outcome. A comeback like that doesn’t happen often in soccer and even less in a game at this level. It was awesome to see.”
The loss marked the final high school soccer game in the outstanding high school careers of a quartet of North Adams seniors: Cayden Hesler, Trey Hoop, Tyler Reed and Michael Mullenix. The Devils completed the season at 13-5-2.