It took almost an entire year, but Bedford High School will get another crack at the team that eliminated them from the state boys’ soccer semifinals in 2022.
The Buccaneers host Hopkinton at Sabourin Field at 12 noon on Saturday in the state Division 2 quarterfinals. The winner will advance to the Final Four, played at neutral sites.
Bedford advanced after outlasting the Reading Memorial High School Rockets on Wednesday night, 2-1, in the state tournament’s round of 16. All of the scoring was in the first half.
“That was a gut-check game,” Head Coach Dave Boschetto told the Bucs as they began to decompress after the post-game handshakes. “We got a win and we get to play on. The job is not done.”
Junior midfielder Spencer Goss opened the scoring for Bedford with a video highlight goal about 15 minutes into the action. After a dazzling spin move that cleared the defenders, Goss launched the ball from about 12 yards out into the upper-left corner of the net on the field’s west end.
Reading, which qualified for the second round after shutting out Wayland earlier this week, tied the score several minutes later. Shea Arsenault, the junior midfielder, scored what turned out to be the winning goal with about two-and-a-half minutes remaining in the half, finding the net during a scramble after a corner kick.
The Rockets spent a lot of time pressing in the Bedford end during much of the second half, but the Bucs pretty much shut them down during the final 15 minutes. Boschetto praised his players for closing out the game with “huge minutes down the stretch.”
Hopkinton, seeded eighth, beat North Attleborough for the right to meet the top seed in Bedford.
Boschetto told the team that when he learned of the rematch with Hopkinton, “I got chills.”
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