Youthful, athletic Everett plans to make the playoffs after narrowly missing the postseason last fall

Following three straight road games, Tide girls soccer hosts Chelsea next Thursday night at the Stadium in the home opener

By Joe McConnell

Dom Persuitte’s Everett High School girls soccer team just missed qualifying for the postseason last year with an 8-10 record. They needed just one more win to secure a playoff spot. But this year, with an influx of young talent, there’s optimism that they will come up with that win and possibly even more to get where they want to go in November.

“We are a good, aggressive, young and athletic team this year,” said Persuitte.

On the varsity alone, the veteran coach has approximately seven seniors, three juniors, six sophomores and five freshmen suiting up. With the exception of the freshmen, the remainder of this roster are all varsity returnees.

“Our biggest strength this season will be our athleticism, and our ability to also move the ball around to let it do the work,” said Persuitte. But because of their youthfulness, the coach knows that they have to work on developing chemistry to get everybody clicking on the same page.

There are three captains on this year’s squad, including seniors Casey Martinez (centerback, defense) and Luna Sepulveda (center attacking midfielder), and junior Sofia Arana-Quintanilla (center attacking midfielder, defense). All three captains are returning starters, who have played on the varsity since freshman year.

The Everett girls have had three scrimmages to get ready for the regular season. They first shutout Pioneer Charter, 5-0, before losing to Haverhill (6-0) and Waltham (2-0).

“We had our ups and downs in all three scrimmages, which led us to a new formation that we will be using during the season,” said Persuitte.

The Everett coach says that Somerville is always the team to beat in the Greater Boston League (GBL), and this year is no exception. “Last year, we limited (Somerville) to only two goals in our last meeting with them,” said Persuitte. “But all of the GBL teams are very competitive, so it’s hard to single out which ones will be the toughest. Obviously, we want to beat them all, but I’m realistic. We, however, are still going into each game with the mentality that we will win them.”

All of Persuitte’s assistants are back this year, a first for the program under his watch. “There’s such great chemistry here among the coaches,” said Persuitte. “This will be my fourth year as the head coach, and Bridget Cifuni has always been alongside me as my varsity assistant. Leah Ferullo is returning for her second year as a coach. I coached Leah in my first year as a head coach, and she did so well as a player in terms of leadership and skills that I asked her to help out in the coaching department after graduation, and she has been doing a great job ever since teaching the JV girls the basics to be ready for the varsity level.”

The Tide girls are opening up the regular season this week on the road. They were at Lowell on Wednesday (Sept. 3) after press deadline, before heading to Waltham to face the Hawks later today (Sept. 5) at 4:30 p.m. Next week, they will be at Malden on Tuesday (Sept. 9, 4:15 p.m.). Everett will finally come home to take on Chelsea at Everett Memorial Stadium two days later at 6:30 p.m. Non-league Lawrence will then follow the Red Devils to the Stadium for a Saturday morning game (Sept. 13) at 11 a.m.