For the second straight year, the Hollis Brookline girls soccer team won the Division II title, in more dominant fashion than a year ago. (Telegraph photo by TOM KING)

EXETER – How will the 2024 Hollis Brookline High School girls soccer team be remembered?

All you need to see are the words of their opponents, especially from Coe-Brown coach Josh Hils, who imparted his thoughts to HB coach Peter Clarke after a 5-0 loss in the semifinals.

“I told Peter my 19th year that’s the best team I’ve seen in Division II soccer, hands down,” he said. “This is my 19th season, they’re so well prepared, they’re so quick and athletic. Hats off. Peter’s done a heckuva job getting them ready.”

The numbers don’t lie. In winning their second consecutive Division II state championship a week ago with a second consecutive 19-0 season, the Cavaliers as a program have won 38 in a row. Their last loss was to Pelham in the semifinals at Nashua’s Stellos Stadium in 2022. That was preceded by a semifinal loss the previous year in overtime to Bow. So there have been growing pains galore, but those freshmen that 2021 semis loss have reaped the rewards as seniors.

It was after that game three years ago the Clarke had a feeling that the future held something special. It was just getting there that would be a process worth enduring. That process not only included the loss to Pelham the following year, but also a dramatic penalty kick win over these same Falcons a year ago in the semifinals that got the Cavs over a difficult hump. They followed that up with a 2-1 win title win over Coe-Brown.

They finally arrived. But it all went back to 2021.

“That night I said ‘We reallly are playing well, moving the ball around,'” Clarke said. “And we realized what we could build. And it’s come to fruition.

“Last year we poked through and they were able to come back this year and work every night at getting a little bit better at what we do. We didn’t really have to do anything new. … Everybody’s willing to just step out there and play a role, and move the ball quickly.”

And, as Clarke said, it’s been “against the best of competition – that’s the other thing.”

Thus it’s ironic that that group’s final championship came vs. the Falcons, who gave the Cavaliers their toughest game of the 2024 season, a 1-0 game in which Marleigh Kreick’s goal nearly 24 minutes in was the only score of the game.

Of course, throughout the last few years, it helped that the Cavs had a 100-plus goal career scorer in McKenna Maguire. Bow did a good job in the finals to take her out of the game at times, but she still made her presence felt as HB put pressure on in the final 20 minutes, that show of offensive strength taking the pressure off an otherwise flawless defensive effort. A season long defensive effort, that saw HB give up just four goals the entire season, and none in the tournament. That’s four. Incredible.

As Bow coach Jay Vogt said, his game plan worked and it still didn’t produce a win.

The irony is the Falcons followed the game plan and still fell short.

“Our strategy was to try to get someone else other than Makenna to beat us,” Falcons coach Jay Vogt said. “And we did it. That was a great shot that they scored on, we defended well, but we just didn’t create enough opportunities. We couldn’t get through their defense.”

That defense was led all season by the likes of, among others, Ellie Snoke and Cassidy Engle.

“That’s our hidden strength, and I think it’s one of our bigger strengths,” Clarke said. “They work as a group …It has to be hard to play against us because we don’t let people in. I was a defensive player, I prefer it, and this was the best high school defending unit I’ve ever seen.”

Maguire was shadowed in the finals by Bow defender Abigale Foote, but when it ended, it mattered little.

“These last two years has honestly been unreal going undefeated the entire time,” Maguire said. “It (Kreick’s goal) let the pressure off us. We were tied for so long, it kept the game going.”

“I couldn’t have done it without my teammates,” Kreick said. “The whole buildup, Molly’s pass to me, all their hard work in the middle, I was a the top of the box and took a chance and just shot it.

“We went 37 games undefeated (going into the final). Losing was not an option today, the pressure just kept going. We all wanted it so badly.”

But it was a struggle, until those final 15 minutes when HB peppered Barrieu, but to no avail. But that prevented the Falcons from mounting any kind of attack.

“The final game always has a different kind of pressure, just like last year with Coe-Brown,” Clarke said. “Jay Vogt is a superb coach, that is a very good team. They came in here and absolutely knocked us off our game for the whole middle stretch. It wasn’t until the last 15-20 minutes that we got back on our game and looked like ourselves again. … We haven’t had anybody hang with us this long.”

The rest of Division II can breathe a sigh of relief. Vogt offered the thinking of how opposing coaches felt the last couple of years.

“(Clarke’s) got a lot of talent,” Vogt said. “So we’ve got to find ways to beat his talent. We tried to do it last year, same thing – defend, and try to play our game and try to create some opportunities.”

“Once we poked our heads above, we realized how good we are, and we could get better,” Clarke said. “We weren’t going to settle and just start over, we were going to start right where we left off, and see how good we could become. That’s the challenge I put down at the beginning of the season, how good could we become?”

Clarke found out.

“We are so much better in this last stretch than we were in the beginning of the year,” he said. “And that’s the rewarding part, they see it, they understood it, they embrace it. They did work on the little things and they did see the game as a group. They see the space, they see the space, they work the ball, they support each other and as a group they found a way.”

It was somewhat ironic how it all ended. HB keeper Mya Blackman wasn’t challenged much this season but she came up with a couple of big saves. She beat Bow’s Ashley Whalen to a loose ball outside the box right in the final seconds as the two collided, squelching any chance at a final threat.

Then it was time to celebrate.

“I could see my kids feeling the pressure,” Clarke said. “But like I said before, they will find their way out, and they did. … We moved the ball around a little bit, we got attacking again, and stayed in our groove. That was the difference.”

And that’s their legacy. Unbeaten champions yet again.

“Having an unbeaten season is usually the end for everybody. To do it again? … I think it’s a once in a lifetime thing.”

The Cavs lose Maguire and five other seniors. Their entire midfield will return, and there were some promising freshmen that Clarke will try to develop. “You lose a McKenna Maguire, you cannot replace her,” he said. “We’ll adjust the system to what we have and we’ll come at ’em again. I don’t know if it will look like this year; I doubt it.

“It’s the best I’ve ever seen. You may never see it again.”