12-man Lee team shuts out SAHS 5-0

LEE – There’s one sub, four returning starters and more inexperience than you might want on a team looking to get back to the Eastern Maine playoffs.

But that didn’t stop the Lee Academy boys soccer team from scoring four goals in the second half en route to a 5-0 season-opening victory over Southern Aroostook of Dyer Brook Tuesday at Linscott Field.

Lee freshmen started school Tuesday and the upperclassmen start today. Pandas coach Galen Thompson is hoping to bring in a few more players to spell the starters.

It’s tough to play almost the entire game, especially early in the season, when athletes aren’t as conditioned as they are later in the season. But Sean “Opie” McDonald, who scored a goal and assisted on another, said that doesn’t deter the Pandas.

“We train hard, we play hard,” McDonald said. “It’s tiring but we try to give 110 percent.”

Southern Aroostook, now 1-3, has only three players that come off the bench, so coach Jon Porter was able to make substitutions with regularity.

But the Pandas played a step ahead of the Warriors for most of the game even though Southern Aroostook held Lee to one goal in the first half. SAHS forwards Josh Holman, Joe St. Pierre and Corey Edkins got past the Lee defense several times but weren’t able to finish their offensive plays.

“I wasn’t totally disappointed,” Porter said. “We made a few good runs on the net. But we don’t have that person who has that goal-scoring mentality yet.”

The Pandas, however, rushed the goal when they needed to and had a lot of success scoring off of set plays. McDonald’s goal happened when goalie Matt Malone came out of the box to grab McDonald’s corner kick, but it slipped out of his hands and backward into the net. Chris Cole scored the second goal after a throw-in.

“We’ve been working on that in practice,” first-year Lee coach Thompson said. “It’s going to be an important part of our season. We’ve got Charlie Worster, who can throw it in almost the length of the goal and we always get a few good chances off of those.”

Indeed, Worster helped the Pandas to a 3-0 lead with 17:28 left when he threw the ball into play about 20 yards away from the goal, McDonald fielded it and Matt Corbin scored.

“We were just trying to use throw-ins and trying to cross it in from the outside,” McDonald said.

Worster added another goal on a penalty kick with 3:08 left in the game.

Dustin Pickering scored the final goal of the game with six seconds left and both teams down to 10 players after an altercation led to dual red cards.

Lee outshot Southern Aroostook 18-12. Malone saved seven shots and Pandas goalkeeper Adam Ham stopped eight shots.