Everything seemed to be going right for the Worcester Hydra in their inaugural match from a strong performance to a good crowd at Foley Stadium in Worcester, Mass. The only problem? The result: a 1-0 loss to the Seacoast United Phantoms.<\/p>\n
While the Hydra outshot the Phantoms 13-2, it made no difference in the final score line. \u00a0The Phantoms took the lead through striker Dylan George in the 52nd minute and kept the Hydra quiet the rest of the way to grab a 1-0 win to open the season.<\/p>\n
George, a University of New Hampshire product, was pushed wide by the Hydra defense before cutting inside and sending a low shot past Hydra \u2018keeper Oliver Blum, who recently played for Northeastern University and the Portland Phoenix, at the near post for the game winning goal. It was Seacoast United\u2019s only shot on target.<\/p>\n
The Hydra, meanwhile, threatened with six shots on target, but couldn\u2019t beat Phantom\u2019s goalkeeper and UNH product Colin O\u2019Donnell. Brazilian Alencar Junior took eight of the Hydra\u2019s 13 total shots on the night.<\/p>\n
The Phantoms were without several players completing their academic year, but were led by defenders Brad Hilton, Scott Rowling, Ryan Dunn, and Yannick Kabala, a former New England Revolution academy player, in the win.<\/p>\n
“We gave up nothing defensively in the 2nd half, any opportunity Worcester had came in the 1st 45 minutes,” noted Phantoms head coach Iain Scott.\u00a0 “Experience gained from last season\u2019s campaign contributed to the result tonight.”<\/p>\n
Worcester Mayor Joseph Petty took part in the ceremonial first kick in front of a reported crowd of over 500.<\/p>\n
The Phantoms return home to New Hampshire next weekend with their PDL squad taking on CFC Azul on Sunday, May 13 at 7 pm and their NPSL squad playing FC New York at 7 pm on Saturday, May 12. Both games will take place at Portsmouth High School.<\/p>\n
The Hydra return to action on Saturday, May 12 at 7 pm, when they head to Quincy to face Boston Victory at Veterans Memorial Stadium.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Seacoast United opens season with win in Worcester.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[84,89,86],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11678"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11678"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11678\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11680,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11678\/revisions\/11680"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11678"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11678"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11678"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}