After Highlight Goal, Monomoy Girls Soccer Hopes To Continue Building Offense

HARWICH – Monomoy girls soccer head coach Jenn Peterson saw a rebuilding year coming.

It’s just the natural cycles inherent to school sports. The Sharks graduated 10 seniors from last year, close to half the entire roster (Also, another top player from 2025 transferred to boarding school).

For their first game this season, Monomoy had a single starter who saw significant minutes last year.

“We kind of knew this was going to be a season like that, and kind of look at some of the younger players and what we have coming up and get them experience,” Peterson said.

Understandably, the results might not go the Sharks’ way most match days. They’re a young group. Some Sharks slotted in at critical positions have never played soccer before, according to Peterson.

For those players, there is, however, one star example teammate who proves that improvement simply takes time and effort — that this season may be a rebuilding year, but the next ones don’t have to be. Monomoy goalkeeper Abigail Leighton was also new to the sport and had just started playing last year, according to Peterson.

Now, Leighton, a senior, is the Sharks’ “MVP by far,” Peterson said.

Early during a game Monday against Sturgis West, Leighton made a remarkable leaping save to swat away a powerful strike at the crossbar. That was the standout stop of several recorded by Leighton during the match, which ended in a 4-1 win for Sturgis West. 

And beyond the saves for the stat sheet, Leighton proficiently corralled the many deliveries sent traveling into the penalty area.

Only last year, Leighton played in a timeshare with another Sharks keeper. After a full season of split time between the posts, she played in a local summer league (with Peterson on Orleans Surf, a team run by Monomoy assistant coach Steve Austin).

“She's been phenomenal this year,” Peterson said.

Against Sturgis West, the Sharks were heading toward a scoreless finish until, with about seven minutes left, junior Ada Riker took the ball near the left goal line. She rocketed an absolute seam of a shot across the face of the goal into the top right corner, the ball still rising as it hit the back twine.

“We’ve just got to get her in those positions more often [so] that she can take those shots, because yeah, that no-angle shot was pretty impressive,” Peterson said.

Riker’s goal, and Monomoy’s overall play the rest of the way, was a sign the team had responded to a tough first half.

“I thought we did a good job fighting back, and I thought [at] the end of the second half we started to play a little bit better and connect some passes and get some opportunities and go to the ball a little bit more,” Peterson said.

Getting that goal on the board was also important just from a narrative standpoint, as offense has been the early struggle for Monomoy so far. In back-to-back games though, they’ve managed to score.

The hope is that those scores unlock in the young attacking players the idea that they can pass into open space and send crosses and trust teammates will be there, that good things will happen.

“Every goal we score, I think it gives them a little more confidence, so now we build off that,” Peterson said.

That first goal of the back-to-back pair was delivered last Friday against Nantucket by freshman Eleanor Corrie, who had just started playing last year, according to Peterson.

“She just will run over anyone and run forever,” Peterson said. “And so people like that give you some energy and bring everyone else up to that level of athleticism, which helps.”