PORTLAND — Elliot Maker continued his torrid senior season, scoring two goals Thursday night to lead Cheverus to a 3-0 victory against Deering in a Southern Maine Activities Association schoolboy soccer game at Memorial Field.
Maker finished with his sixth multigoal game of the year and brought his season total to 19 goals in 12 games.
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Maker’s production has helped Cheverus produce a 9-2-1 record.
“He’s a real good player and he knows how to score,” said Cheverus Coach Bill LeBlanc, who also said Division I schools are looking at Maker.
“It’s kind of funny with him. He’s gone the last two or three without many goals (three in five games after opening the season with 14 goals in his first six games). He’s like a good striker in college. He’s streaky. He’ll score a bunch of goals and he’ll have a drought for a game or two.”
Maker, who played a role in all three Cheverus goals against Deering, scored early.
Nick Melville appeared to surprise the Deering defenders by skidding a corner along the turf to the front of the goal and connecting with Maker after just 11 minutes.
“I had a corner kick right before that and I kind of lofted it in there,” said Melville, who made a similar corner play for a goal against Thornton Academy earlier in the season. “We usually do that for maybe a head ball because we’ve had some success on that.
“On the second (corner) one of the guys suggested that I should just drive the ball low. I knew it would skip a little bit on the turf. “I was able to drive it in and it hit a spot, and the ball found the right foot.”
The Stags continued to carry the play for the remainder of the half but had to a settle for a 1-0 lead at halftime.
Deering (4-7-1) then came out with a couple of good chances in the opening moments of the second half.
Edgar Gonzalez made a long run to set up an opportunity that he sent wide three minutes in.
Ten minutes later the Rams created what turned out to be their best opportunity of the game.
Gonzalez started the play with a pass to Ben Peterson. The subsequent shot looked as if it was going to find the top of the net, until Cheverus goalkeeper Charlie Mull leaped up and just managed to tip the ball over the crossbar.
Four minutes later, Maker was fouled in the penalty box and Cheverus was awarded a penalty shot.
Melville was selected to take it and made no mistake.
“It was like Coach said at halftime, ‘If we get one more we were going to probably put away the game’,” Melville said.
“I knew that it was an important shot to take and once that went in I think that kind of took the pressure off our defense a little bit more and we were able to fall into our game, which is controlling the ball.”
Maker competed the scoring for the Stags with less than 10 minutes remaining in the game.
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