The Cranston East and West girls soccer teams hit the road last week to compete in their respective quarterfinal matchups and both came up short, as the Bolts fell to Exeter-West Greenwich 4-1 while the Falcons fell to Chariho 2-0.
The Falcons took the fifth seed into the Division I playoffs and drew the No. 4 Chargers. After a scoreless first half, Chariho would break through early in the second to grab a lead and then would bury a header off a corner kick with just over four minutes remaining to secure the win.
West struggled to establish its footing on the offensive end throughout the night, literally and figuratively.
“We were on grass, we’re used to turf, and in the second half we just couldn’t get it done. Chariho played great, we had one defensive breakdown that deflated us and we just couldn’t finish. It’s a tough field to play on,” said West coach Jeremy Sherer after the loss.
Despite the defeat, it was another strong season for the Falcons, who finished with an overall record of 11-8-1. It was the 12th playoff appearance in a row for the Falcons, who will now flip the page toward the 2025 season.
West will be graduating a few key seniors. Keeper Oceanna Orlandi has been a four-year starter for the Falcons and grew into one of the state’s best goalies during that time.
“Certainly Oceanna is going to be missed. We were fortunate to have her these past four years and she has come up big for us,” said Sherer, who credited a few more veterans that will be moving on. “We’ll miss their leadership. Jordan (Costa) has been great in the back, Sarah (Pimental) at mid and Stalia (Biosse) up front. We have eight seniors graduating. Hopefully we can get healthy, we return a good core of players and hopefully we can bring in a good group of freshmen.”
Although West is still looking to take a step forward and into the championship mix, Sherer is proud of the strength of the overall program and feels that the Falcons will be a force in the state’s top division for years to come.
“Our program is good in terms of being competitive year in and year out. We never finish at the bottom and we’re too good to move down to Division II. We’re too competitive to move down, we don’t want to,” said Sherer. “We had a good season, we would have loved to have made it to the semis and we would have loved to have played on turf. That would have been a very interesting game.”
The Bolts took the sixth seed into the Division III postseason and were matched up against No. 3 EWG. The Knights won both meetings in the regular season and surged to a quick 3-0 lead in the first half before wrapping the 4-1 decision.
It was a bounce back season for the Bolts, who won only one game in 2023 before earning eight victories this fall to return to the postseason. Tia Sanzaro, Madeline Flinn and keeper Isabella Dupret led the way for the Bolts as senior captains. East will be returning junior captain Macy Barron next season as it looks to remain in the DIII playoff picture.