Barn doors, fish in barrels and messengers were all safe this past week as Belmont High School soccer teams suddenly lost their ability to put shots into the back of the net.

On Thursday evening , Oct. 9, Belmont Boys’ soccer dominated stretches of their game against Wakefield High under the lights at Harris Field but couldn’t find the right combination of passes to break the Red Raider defense and were forced to split the difference with a nil-nil draw.

But despite the current goal-scoring drought – the Marauders put the ball between the posts only three times in the past five games posting a record of 2-2-1 during that time – Belmont Boys’ first-year head coach gave an upbeat observation after the tie.

“Sometimes you have to taper your expectations because we’re playing well,” said Brian Bisceglia-Kane, noting that the team has outplayed their two latest opponents by wide margins.

“They’re feeling down because they dominated the game but honestly, they created enough scoring opportunities and that’s our game plan. I wouldn’t do much different then what we just did,” he said.

Bisceglia-Kane said the solution to the team’s lack of scoring punch is “being more intuitive to where you should be.”

While the team has had plenty of scoring opportunities in the past five games, “we didn’t play the ball necessarily the way we practice. Then there is a lack of composure, feeling that urgency to score and then there is just having some luck.”

At the beginning of the season, the Marauders was winning games scoring three to four goals, “and we aren’t playing any differently now,” Bisceglia-Kane said. 

“The goals will come,” he said.

Earlier in the afternoon, Belmont Girls’ soccer also found trouble scoring, but unlike the boys’, Head Coach Paul Graham’s squad fell to hosts Wakefield, 4-1, in what Graham called “our poorest performance of the season.”

Like the Boys’, the Belmont Girls’ have scored three goals in the past five games, going 1-3-1 over the stretch.

“We didn’t win or go to the ball; we didn’t have the effort that we need to do win,” said Graham. Down 1-0, junior Kristin Gay took a pretty pass from sophomore forward Julia Cella and belt an 18 meter shot by the Red Raider goalkeeper, who Graham praised for making “three or four great saves that could have gotten us closer.”

Graham took time to point out the play of Alex Dionne and Lucia Guzikowski and the contribution of senior Maggie Shea in the nets for the final moments of the game.