By Chris Paul
The Londonderry High School Boys’ Soccer team very nearly caused a significant upset in the New Hampshire Interscholastic Athletic Association’s Division I playoffs last week, but wound up one goal shy of moving on from the first round.
The Lancers 5-9-2 regular season record put them in the state championship as the number 14 seed and they needed to beat the number three-seeded Nashua North High School Titan’s to advance them in the playoffs.
The Londonderry squad’s defense was able to keep the Titans limited to one goal in the first half of their first round game in Nashua and headed into the second half trailing by one.
Nashua North took a two-goal lead at the five-minute mark of the second half, after a penalty kick by the Titans.
In the 55th minute of the game, senior forward, Cristian Levantovski-Correa, scored his 14th goal of the year to bring the Lancers to with a goal of tying.
Senior Brady Joncas was able to knot the game at two in the 70th minute with an assist from junior Jackson Lewis to send the game into an overtime period.
After a scoreless overtime, the game went into penalty kicks, where North won 4-3.
Both teams were successful in their first three kicks, and both had shots blocked in the fourth kick.
The fifth penalty kick wound up being the deciding goal, with North having success and Londonderry missing.
Lancers head coach, Todd Ellis, was pleased with the team, despite the difficult loss.
He said after the game, “The players played really hard today, and although the outcome was not what we wanted we fought until the end. As the 14th seed we took the third seed to PKs, and almost had them. It was great to see the players not fold after a difficult PK call and fight their way to a tie. It is never fun to lose your last game, but I am proud of how the team competed today.