By PAUL J. SPETRINI
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NORTH SCITUATE—For a group that didn’t even have a designated tent area at Ponaganset High School Saturday afternoon, the Exeter West Greenwich girls cross country team sure did well in the Class C Meet.
How well? Try sixth place.
Led by the top-five finishes of senior Renae Miozzi and junior Amy Cunningham, EWG tallied 140 total team points to finish behind only Smithfield, Burrillville, East Greenwich, Scituate and Mount St. Charles in the annual lead in to the state championship.
Now, while the Knights themselves did not qualify as a team for states, they’ll be well represented as both Miozzi and Cunningham are slated to run Sunday in the sport’s biggest race of the year.

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By ERIC RUEB
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CRANSTON – The North Kingstown field hockey team had no reason to be intimidated facing No. 1 seed Barrington in last Thursday’s Division I semifinal.
The Skippers might have been the No. 4 seed, but the two-time defending state champs weren’t your typical No. 4 – and they played like it.
The stat sheet tells one story, a story of NK dominating the Eagles for the entire game, possessing the ball enough to take nine penalty shots to Barrington’s four, nine shots to three and eight shots on goal to three.
But the scoreboard told another story, the one that happened last Thursday, the one where the Eagles accidentally found a goal in the first half of Thursday’s game and scored another when NK had changed its focus from defense to offense as the Skippers fell, 2-0, ending their season without a chance to play for the state title and disappointed after playing maybe its best 60 minutes of the season.
“I think they played fantastic. If you look at shots on goal and the number of opportunities we had, we outplayed them,” NK coach Julie Maguire said. “But unfortunately if you can’t put the ball in the net, you can’t get the same results”.

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By KEVIN RYDER
Special to the Standard

PROVIDENCE – The North Kingstown girls soccer team, the fourth seed with a sub-.500 record, put quite a scare into the top team in the state during its quarterfinal playoff game Thursday night.
After a scoreless first half, LaSalle was able to strike for three goals over a 20-minute span to register a 3-0 victory at Cimini Stadium and advance to the semifinals of the playoffs. The loss ended the season for the Skippers, who finished 6-8-3.
“The girls put in a tremendous effort for 75 minutes, you can’t fault that,” said NK coach David Murphy. “Playing against a team that hasn’t lost a game and have very good players and are a good technical team, we gave a good effort. We knew it was going to be a hard game and we gave them a game. That wasn’t an easy 3-0 win for them.”
The key for the Skippers, who had lost a month earlier to the Rams 7-1 on the same field, was to try to control the offensive firepower that LaSalle possessed, including forwards McKenzie Meehan (42 goals, 13 assists on the season), Allison Kelley (13 goals, seven assists) and Daria Capaldi (10 goals, six assists).

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By BRANDEN MELLO
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CRANSTON — The good news for the red-hot Exeter-West Greenwich girls’ soccer team is they won’t have to play speedy Smithfield on Cranston Stadium’s ultra-fast FieldTurf because as Prout found out, that’s a losing proposition.
The bad news for the Knights is they will still have to play a Smithfield team that is and brimming with confidence and hasn’t lost in its last 12 games Sunday afternoon at Rhode Island College for the Division II title. Whoever wins Sunday’s game, which kicks off at 2 p.m., it will be the either school’s first Division II title. Smithfield does own two Division III titles.
“I think it’s going to be exciting and the girls will be up for it knowing that no other girls’ soccer team from E-WG has ever played in a final,” E-WG coach Kevin Fraser said after his team upset Mount St. Charles Monday night. “We have a chance to make history, I saw the way this team meshed at the beginning of preseason that the way they meshed together, they had an opportunity to go far.”

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By BRANDEN MELLO
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KINGSTON — Rhode Island wide receiver Shawn Leonard caught touchdown passes from junior quarterback Chris Paul-Etienne to start and end Saturday’s Colonial Athletic Association contest at Meade Stadium.
Everything that happened in between those two plays went the way a college football game should go when the No. 5 team in the country brings one of the best defenses in the country to face an inexperienced team struggling to find an identity on offense.
William and Mary, which beat ACC squad Virginia to start the season, held the struggling Rams to a mind-boggling minus-44 yards of rushing, while Tribe running back Courtland Marriner rushed for 91 yards and three touchdowns in the Williamsburg, Va. based squad’s 39-14 win over the Rams.
“They don’t have a unit that can be exposed, offense, defense or special teams,” URI coach Joe Trainer said of the 7-1 overall and 3-1 in the CAA Tribe. “They’re much better than they were a year ago. Defensively, they are very athletic and they are playing with a lot of seniors, particularly up front. That’s a model where we want to get to.”
The Rams, who are in the midst of playing three of top seven teams in the country in three straight weeks, are now 1-7 overall and 0-5 in the CAA North, are now the only winless the team in the conference after James Madison upset Delaware Saturday afternoon. Saturday, Rhody didn’t make too many mistakes and didn’t turn the ball over, but they could get nothing going against a Tribe defense which features NFL prospects Adrian Tracy and Sean Lisamore.
William and Mary coach Jimmye Laycock said his team came into the game planning to make the Rams’ one dimensional and that is exactly what they did. URI freshman running back Iyo Isijola led the Rams with 17 yards on 10 carries. Ryan Lawrence and Anthony Ferrer combined for minus-one yards on four carries.
“We have a good defense, it’s not a surprise we come out and put up those numbers,” Laycock said of a group which came into the game with the fifth best rush defense in the country. “We’ve got a good front four. They basically gave up on the run, I don’t think they felt like they could run the ball against us so they gave up on it. We were just teeing off.”
In URI’s blowout losses to UMass, UConn and Villanova, the Rams gave up big plays at the beginning of the game and could never recover. Saturday, the Tribe made the first mistake of the game and the Rams’ capitalized. After a Tribe penalty negated a solid punt by David Miller, the Tribe proceeded to turn the ball over on a bad snap.
URI took over at the plus-26 and eight plays later the Rams were in the end zone. Paul-Etienne, who went 19-for-34 for 195 yards, connected with the senior wide receiver for a five-yard score. The Rams earned three first downs on the drive, but they would only earn one more for the rest of the first half.
The visitors, who had a strong wind at their back in the first quarter, tied the score late in the quarter when Marriner scored a nine-yard touchdown. Quarterback R.J. Archer was the catalyst on the drive as he completed two passes and ran the ball once to bring it to the URI 8.
Archer’s biggest plays, however, came in the second quarter when the game was still a competitive contest. The senior signal caller connected with Cameron Baker on a third-and-3 midway through the second quarter. The Tribe eventually scored a touchdown to take a 14-7 lead. Two drives later, Archer ran for five yards on a third-and-5 and he connected with Cameron Dohse on a fourth down to keep another scoring drive alive.
“Good teams don’t make those mistakes,” Trainer said of getting off the field on third and fourth down. “You’re going to look back at the game and there are a total of 10 plays that are either made or not made that kept drives alive or inhibited our ability to keep drives alive. It’s a sign of a good team. We only had four penalties, so we are making an improving there.”
After Mariner scored his second touchdown of the game the start of the third quarter to make the score 27-7, the Rams committed one of those four penalties. URI, for the first time in a while had stopped Archer and Tribe to force a Miller punt. But, URI was offside and the second life allowed Brian Pata to kick a 19-yard field goal.
The only positive for the Rams in a third quarter where they ran just nine offensive plays and earned one first down was the punting of Tim Edger. Edger used the wind at his back to kick punts of 68 and 46 yards. For the game, Edger punted the ball 10 times for an average of 41.5 yards.
Marriner scored his third touchdown 2 minutes, 28 seconds into the fourth quarter when he took a draw play 38 yards for a touchdown. William and Mary, which sacked Paul-Etienne six times and hurried the junior countless more times, earned two more points when Kyle O’Brien sacked the Rutgers transfer in the end zone.
URI, which couldn’t move the ball for most of the game, actually moved the ball on the final drive. Paul-Etienne completed passes to Joe Bellini and Tom Lang before throwing a 29-yard touchdown pass to Leonard.
Life doesn’t get much easier for the Rams because they must travel up to Durham, N.H. this Saturday to take on a top-10 New Hampshire squad which scored 51 points against the Rams last year thanks to the play of quarterback R.J. Toman and running back Chad Kackert.

By ERIC RUEB
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EXETER – Like the bad 80s song, the Exeter-West Greenwich football team ran, ran so far away.
But the Knights did get away.
Al Georgio ran for 248 yards and scored three touchdowns and Adam Sweeney added 103 yards and two scores as EWG ran all over PCD/Wheeler 43-20 Saturday afternoon and after a lackluster start to the season, have found themselves back in the postseason discussion.
“We’re still in it. We had some hiccups early on but we’re still in it,” said Sweeney, who will be ready to go Saturday when the Knights play a must-win game at Hope. “We’re rising from the ashes and we’re going to get better.”

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By KEVIN RYDER
Special to the Standard

WARWICK – It was clear from the start that North Kingstown was overmatched.
Bishop Hendricken (4-2 Division I, 4-3 overall) scored touchdowns on six of its first seven possessions and was never tested in a dominating 47-0 victory over the Skippers (0-7, 0-8) Friday night at Hayden Memorial Stadium.
NK racked up just 28 yards of total offense in the first half and never once crossed midfield. On the flip side, the Hawks did just about anything they wanted on offense and defense, gaining 286 yards against the North defense.
“That was bad; I felt like I let the kids down and didn’t have them prepared,” said North Kingstown head coach John Horsman. “Hendricken’s a good club, but 47-0? That’s my fault. I didn’t have the kids ready to play.”

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By ERIC RUEB
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SMITHFIELD – There were tears on the face of Oliver Walsh after the Exeter-West Greenwich boys soccer team’s 1-0 loss to Tiverton in the semifinals of the Division III playoffs Tuesday night.
But tears are a funny thing and Walsh’s tears of sadness immediately following the game turned to tears of pride as he talked about what the Knights went through this season.
“We’ve always kind of been an underdog,” he said. “For all I know, we’ve only been to the state championships once and we didn’t take it all the way there. I’m proud of these kids. They gave me a great final season and although we end up losing, I can’t ask for more. I trust these kids with my life and it’s really great they would try so hard for me.”

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By BRANDEN MELLO
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CRANSTON — The Exeter-West Greenwich girls soccer team made sure for the fourth consecutive year the team with the best record in Division II wouldn’t hold up the state championship plaque at the end of the season.
The Knights, who know about playoff disappointment after three straight one-goal exits from the quarterfinal round, did something Monday in the Division II semifinals that no other team has done this year – beat the Mount.
Sophomore midfielder Alexis Clements scored a brilliant opening goal off a free kick from her sister Ariana Clements and scored a second on a penalty kick, while senior captain Hayley Kenyon scored the game-winning goal in the 39th minute to lift the underdog Scarlet Knights to a 3-2 win over the favored Mounties.

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By PAUL J. SPETRINI
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NORTH SCITUATE—The boys and girls cross country teams from North Kingstown  have had remarkably similar seasons.
Both went 9-0 during the dual meet portion of their schedule, both won the Southern Division title and both finished third in their Class Meet Saturday at Ponaganset.
And, if they keep this up, both may well end up with state championship banners this weekend to boot.
NK junior Zach Sietes-Rundlett had the best individual finish for the Skippers Saturday, placing sixth overall in the boys meet, but the Skipper girls fared just as well as freshman Aisha McAdams and seniors Kathryn Lynch and Kelsey Evans finished eighth, ninth and 11th overall as both NK squads put in solid performances in the last event before states.

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