GIRARD — Under an off-and-on drizzle through most of the night, the Poland girls soccer team continued to show its defensive strength with its 11th shutout of the year in a 4-0 victory over Girard in Northeast-8 Conference play.

“Our team is a very defensive team,” Poland coach Joel Monaco said. “We’re very sound and stout. Our goalkeeper is fantastic. We’re building this team from the back up.

“We’re working on our offense. We’re developing our chemistry. To do that, we’re playing differently. We’re getting more reps. We’re looking for those lanes. Looking for those runners. There wasn’t a lot of communication tonight. We need to work on that. I was talking a lot, but that’s about it.”

That change-up led to some success with their runners getting into the heart of the Girard (2-9, 1, 2-7-1) defense. Carolyn Boccieri scored less than four minutes into the contest to give the Bulldogs (9-0-5, 9-0-4) an early lead.

Poland had six shots on goal in the first half but dealt with some offsides penalties that interrupted its offense at times.

“Girard is tough,” Monaco said. “They are an up and coming team. They are getting things together. They run a very good offsides line. They run it well, almost to perfection. When you get a team like us tonight, still working on those fundamental skills, we’re still getting better at it. It was a good challenge for us tonight.”

“We’re very good at pulling offside traps,” Girard coach Kayla Richey said. “It tends to frustrate other teams which is always beneficial to get them caught off guard and get us going up the field. When we played them last, it was 1-0 with seven minutes left.”

This meeting didn’t stay 1-0 as Halle Sebest’s goal with 28:17 left in the opening half pushed the lead to 2-0 which proved troublesome for the Indians as they couldn’t get into their offensive sets nearly enough.

It’s the blueprint of success for Poland, as it has only given up two goals all year behind the play of goalkeeper Gabby Romano.

“She’s doing very well,” Monaco said. “We pride ourselves in protecting our goalkeeper. We try to not allow those shots. We run an organized system back there. We try to keep things clean and very preventative. If we do give up shots, we want to give up no attractive shots, longer shots, and things like that.

“We try to mark our runners. We play high pressure a lot which is good against certain teams. Tonight it was effective, but against another team, we might drop more. With teams like this, we try to high pressure them. We try to force some bad passes.”

That high-pressure attack limited the Indians to just two shots on goal while the Bulldogs had 15 on goal. The barrage of shots in the opening six minutes of the second half saw two shots hit the top crossbar before Molly Malmer’s goal at the 34:43 mark made it 3-0.

Avrey Grischow’s offensive runs were opening up passing lanes that allowed Poland to play most of the game on Girard’s side of the field.

“Avrey is a fantastic player,” Monaco said. “So is Molly, our two strikers. They’re just getting comfortable with that, looking up and distinguishing when to make that run. We’re building that chemistry for when the pass happens and finding those open lanes.

“That chemistry is just taking time. Our priority is to get that straightened out before tournament time which is obviously in a week. It’s not far, we just need better communication.”

For the Indians, Richey said the team is coming along, but had the unfortunate task of running up against a team that doesn’t give the opposition much on offense.

“They’re a tough team,” Richey said. “They haven’t lost a game yet. That’s always tough, but we possessed the ball and were able to move it around. It was good preparation for the tournament.”