NEW BEDFORD- No. 28 Winchester came into the Whaling City and upset No. 5 New Bedford 2-1 in the First Round of the MIAA Division 1 Boys Soccer tournament on Thursday evening.
The Red and Black (11-3-4) came into this game after their 1-0 win against no. 37 Andover on Monday in the Preliminary Round. New Bedford (14-5-0) came into this game trying to get their first tournament victory since the 2019 South Sectional tournament.
Despite the Red and Black entering the game with a much lower seed than the Whalers, Winchester Head Coach Vinnie Musto said his team didn’t enter with an underdog mentality.
“We didn’t go into this match thinking that if we won, it was going to be a big upset,” Musto said. “We were confident from minute one, we thought we were the better team, and we came out as quickly as we could.”
The Red and Black scored their two goals within two minutes of each other in the first half. The first came Ean Errico fired a shot that deflected off a Whaler defender and went to junior captain Cole Queenan, who fired it into the net in the 18th minute.
Just a couple of minutes later, Seif Ebeid got through two Whaler defenders and passed to Tom Duval, who put it in for the goal.
“We wanted to be the first to score, and we were aggressive enough to get two quick ones,” Musto said. “Then we locked it down.”
New Bedford had numerous chances to score in the first half, including six corner kicks in the half, with Winchester netminder William Brown tipping it a couple of times, which made the Whalers take another corner. One shot from Diego Ribeiro, taken from the left side of the net, went post to post without crossing the net into the goal.
In the second half, New Bedford had most of the offensive possession, but was only able to get one shot into the goal, which was Joao Pedro Dos Santos, who scored off the eighth corner for the Whalers in the 46th minute, with Flavio Martins taking that corner for the assist.
There were more chances that the Whalers were unable to capitalize on, like two free kicks by Martins in the offensive zone. On the second free kick, Martins just hit the crossbar with no other player on either team touching it. The Red and Black held their own in the final minutes of the game and pulled off this upset.
In total, the Whalers had 10 corners in the game, while the Red and Black just had three corners to their name. Brown had four saves in net for Winchester, and sophomore Max Hoaglund-Rodrigues also had four saves for the Whalers.
Winchester will be heading down to Brookline to take on the No. 21 Brookline Warriors in the Round of 16, who themselves upset No. 12 St. John’s (Shrewsbury) on Tuesday. This is a rematch from the 2023 second round, which Winchester won 3-0.
