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Defending SMAC champion Northern knocks off Stone thanks to Turgeon's pair
Friday, Sept. 11, 2009
 Click here to enlarge this photo Staff photo by EMILY BAsRNES
Northern's Justin Phelps, left, battles with Stone's Johann Stumpf-Fetizon.
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The Northern Patriots, the defending SMAC champions from a year ago, fell in heartbreak fashion to La Plata in the Class 3A South regional final.
However, with 10 seniors, 11 juniors and only one sophomore, the Patriots are back in form and hungry at yet another possible run this campaign. Tuesday night, they took care of some early season business, outlasting host Thomas Stone 4-1 in their season opener.
"It was nice to get a win. Thomas Stone was a good team," Northern head coach John Rossi said. "I thought we showed a lot of good things and I think it's a lot we need to work on as a team. The guys are committed and don't want to let the Northern tradition down that we built up. I'm proud of our effort tonight and I look forward to Leonardtown on Thursday, they have a good team and we're going to try to work hard and get ready for them."
Northern (1-0 overall, 1-0 SMAC) hosted Leonardtown on Thursday night in an early SMAC battle and was too late for inclusion into this edition.
The visitors jumped out early on the Cougars and ended up taking a 2-0 halftime lead. Connecting on the first of Northern's four goals was senior midfielder Eric Clark, who scored in transition on an assist from Casey McConkey (two assists) inside the six-yard box that hit in the right corner of the net with 17 minutes into the game.
"At the beginning, our focus was to keep the ball down and not play around with it," said Clark, an All-SMAC standout last season. "We wanted to move it around, so they wouldn't have a chance of getting it towards our end of the field. If you keep working the ball around, something will open up somewhere."
Patriots senior striker Andrew Turgeon had a game-high two goals on the night and gave his team an offensive boost.
"On the first one, Casey placed a good ball down the line and I actually was trying to cross it and the ball got deflected by one of the defenders and luckily it went in the net," Turgeon said. "On the second one, Jason [Bennett] took it down the sideline and I tapped it in."
Northern senior goalie Chris Glasgow finished with six saves and even dove out of the box to stop a couple Stone shots at the net.
Stone only had three shots on goal in the entire contest.
"We played really well. Everyone was helping me out on defense," Glasgow said. "It was a team effort and the strikers played good defense and we finished all the way around tonight. We're excited. Like you said we have a lot of talent, we just have to keep pushing ourselves."
Turgeon scored his second goal in the game's 71st minute, then Dane Slavin, another key senior, scored the team's fourth goal of the game a couple of minutes later.
"I had a good ball that was placed beautifully from my strikers," said Bennett, a senior who mentioned how his teammates set him up to dish out the assists. "Being the outside mid, I just give the strikers support. We came in very intense and did a lot of one, two and three touches to create space from the defense."
With five minutes left, Northern's Ryan Myers was called for a sliding tackle on Cougars senior Alex Ortega. Tyler Bailey then scored on a penalty kick that went pass Glasgow and gave Stone its only goal of the game.
Results
Northern 4, Thomas Stone 1
Northern 2 2
Thomas Stone 0 1
Goals: Northern (Turgeon 2, Clark, Slavin); Stone (Bailey)
Saves: Northern (Glasgow 6), Stone (Turgeon 9)
