Deering wasn’t giving up much, so Scarborough grabbed what it could.

Ashley Gleason scored 35 seconds into the second half, and Katherine Kirk scored 12 minutes later to lead Scarborough to a 2-0 victory over Deering in a physical Western Class A girls’ soccer match Wednesday night at Memorial Field.

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Katherine Kirk, 21, receives a hug from Scarborough teammate Maddie Chen after Kirk fed a pass to Ashley Gleason for a goal early in the second half Wednesday night in Portland. Scarborough won, 2-0. Gabe Souza/Staff Photographer

Strong defending and goalkeeping has been strengths for both teams this season. Coming into Wednesday night, Scarborough had allowed six goals in nine games; Deering four in eight. So it was no surprise that the teams entered the break tied 0-0.

“That happens when you play these big games,” Scarborough Coach Mike Farley said. “You spend 15 minutes getting into the game, seeing what works and what doesn’t.”

Scarborough’s plan was clear at halftime. The Red Storm started to see gaps in Deering’s back line, and Kirk took advantage of one in the opening moments of the second half. She ran up the right sideline and sent a hard cross along the surface of the 18-yard box. With Deering keeper Emily Mooney (21 saves) tracking the ball to her right, Gleason drove the ball back to Mooney’s left for a 1-0 lead.

“No one came to me, so I took the space,” Kirk said. “When they did come to me, it opened up a bunch of space in the middle so I just put it across to Gleason, and she put it in.

“It was relieving and satisfying. We had threatened a few times in the first half and it was satisfying to put one away.”

Kirk put the game away in the 50th minute, driving a nice diagonal pass from Aly Atherton into the upper right corner for a 2-0 lead.

“That was kind of chaotic,” she said. “If I took a touch, it would have been too late. I just figured I’d go for it and I managed to get it over her head.”

Farley liked what he was seeing.

“Gleason finds passes that no one else sees,” he said. “Those passes and the timing of Katherine’s runs were the difference in the game.”

Keeper Molly LeComte made four saves to lead the Red Storm (9-1) to their sixth straight win. LeComte faced few challenges as Scarborough’s holding midfielders Atherton and Mary Farnkoff combined with defenders Sam Sparda, Elise O’Reilly, Emma Smith and Bryce Nitchman to wall off the defensive third.

“Mary and I were trying to stop the ball from getting through to their key striker (Simone Lauture),” Ahterton said. “If it did get through, we knew we had the back line there to get it done.”

Scarborough had the edge in shots on goal (23-7) and corner kicks (3-2). The Rams (6-3) put up a strong fight despite losing two key defenders for long stretches. Sweeper Sophie Silva was slowed by illness, and back Courtney Brett took a hard knock 5 minutes into the second half and took a while to recover.

Deering’s best chances came in the first half, with Ewka Varney, Lauture and Siobhan Densmore combining up the left sideline about 15 minutes in, resulting in a pair of Lauture shots. But LeComte answered.

Mooney stopped two seemingly sure goals by Gleason over the final 9 minutes of the first half. In the 32nd, Mooney pulled down Gleason’s chip shot from 15 yards, and in the final seconds, she reached high to knock away Gleason’s hard drive from the right sideline headed for the top back corner.

Play started to get rough late in the second half, but tempers cooled thanks to a 16-minute delay as the stadium lights turned off with 2:12 to play and had to be reset. The lights came back on, but the game was settled.

“We just couldn’t get into the flow of things,” Deering Coach Kevin Olson said. “Every time we got something going, we turned the ball over.”

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