~ Saugus High School Sports Roundup ~

Saugus girls’ soccer team finishes solid regular season, heads to postseason

The Saugus High School girls’ soccer team finished the regular season with a 14-3-1 overall record and won the Northeastern Conference South division. And now it’s on to another postseason for the Sachems. The team drew the No. 16 seed in the 44-team Division 3 state bracket and will face No. 17 North Reading (13-3-2) at a time and day TBD.

In the regular season finale against Gloucester on the road, Madison Botta had a hat trick, and Madi Femino and Shay Sewell each added two goals in a 7-2 win. The duo of Botta and Femino, captains on the team, has been the 1-2 punch for scoring at the top of the goals leaderboard for the Sachems. Botta, a junior captain, finished the regular season with 23 goals, and senior captain Femino added 19.

Saugus is feeling good heading into the postseason. The Sachems have been consistently strong each season. This fall, however, they eclipsed a milestone of sorts, beating Beverly, Marblehead and Peabody, teams Saugus coach Chris Coviello can’t recall beating in his one-plus decades at the helm.

“And we scored goals against them,” Coviello said. “In the past, there were a lot of shutouts in those games. We never scored goals against them. And our defense was able to stand up against them this year, too.”

With Botta and Femino providing 42 goals, the Sewell sisters, Shay and Shawn, weren’t so bad either. They provided a huge boost to the offense all season.

Senior captain Violet Hawley and Layla Manderson were consistently strong all year on defense. Stopper Danica Schena was super reliable as was Natalie Justice. Ashley Rezendes could be plugged in many places, according to Coviello. Tori Carter held it all together in net.

“My defenders kept us in some games, especially the close games like Swampscott, Beverly and Peabody,” Coviello said. “I mean, when you’re in those close games, it’s the defense that’s keeping you in the game.”

Saugus volleyball team gets in the dance for first time

The Saugus High School volleyball team got into the postseason for the first time in with an 11-9 record, according to first-year coach Mikayla Niles. The Sachems drew the No. 37 seed and will face No. 28 Chicopee (9-9) in a preliminary round game in Division 3. That game is on the road and starts at 6:30 p.m. on Thursday, Nov. 2.

Niles – head coach of the Sachems, who served as an assistant prior to this season and is an alumna of the program – said all along a primary goal was to make the postseason. The team did that with its better-than-.500 record and double-digit winning campaign. Should Saugus win, it’d get No. 5 Holliston (14-4) in the Round of 32 in the 40-team bracket.

Saugus finished in second place in the Northeastern Conference (NEC) Lynch Division with a 5-6 league record behind champion Swampscott, which finished 7-4. Saugus got swept by the Big Blue, but each match came down to the fifth set, and the Sachems finished within a few points in every game.

“It was very intense,” Nile said of the two Swampscott matches. “It was so fun to watch. The other coach and I were talking a lot about that too during the all-star meeting, just how fun it was watching our girls get together and play together so competitively. It was overall really good to be able to watch.”

Ava Rogers and Ana Silva made the NEC Lynch Division all-stars for Saugus.

“When I stepped in a lot of the girls weren’t confident in themselves, and it could vary anywhere between positions,” Niles said. “… They all definitely had their moments where they didn’t feel confident. So the biggest thing for me coming in was just to kind of let everyone know that there is a new face, a new start. … So really, what I just wanted to do is I just wanted to get everyone out of their shells, make them comfortable, help them get better and show they could do it and just to boost their confidence up.”

Saugus came off a four-win season last fall. That means they won 175% more matches this season. Not bad.

“I just wanted to push them into the right direction and just get them on a good start as early as I could,” Niles said.

Niles was certainly a candidate for Coach of the Year in that regard. The league hands out only one of those awards between the two divisions, and Peabody’s Lisa Keene won that one. She netted her 300^th win this season and led the Tanners to an 11-1 NEC Dunn championship run.

And now for Saugus it’s on to Chicopee – a two-hour-plus bus ride Thursday night. “I’ve been watching a lot of film on them, and I definitely think that we can compete,” Niles said. “I have a lot of faith in my girls that we can pull out the win. They made the playoffs because they obviously earned it just like we did.”