SCARBOROUGH — Entering the season, the biggest challenge for the Scarborough boys´ soccer team was to find continuity, especially after graduating 14 players from last season´s Class A championship team.

But the Red Storm seem to be getting by in a traditionally strong fashion.

Scarborough, the top seed in Western Class A, will make its sixth appearance in the Western Class A title game in seven years when it faces No. 3 Windham (12-2-1) at 7 tonight at the Mitchell Sports Complex.

The defense has dictated the way for Scarborough (16-0), which has won 34 straight games since the start of last season. Typically a unit that tends to get overlooked in favor of goalies and goal-scorers –Scarborough´s offense has scored 77 goals this season -- the Red Storm have given up only four goals in 16 games.

Defense is the cornerstone of the program that´s won seven state championships – six in Class A and one in Class B – including last year´s Class A title with a 1-0 victory against Bangor, according to Coach Mark Diaz.

"It´s something we´ve focused on every year," said Diaz, the team´s coach since 1999. "We´ve got four new starters on defense and we spent a lot of time in the preseason working on our defense, working on situations. The key to our program has been defense."

Andrew Nigro, a senior defender, believes there´s a formula to playing sound team defense.

"It takes hard work," Nigro said.

"You have to believe in the guys around you. Play as a unit, because there´s no individual who is the defense. And you always have to trust the goalie."

Nigro is one of the four new starters on the Red Storm´s defense, joining juniors Matt Graef, Peter Rizzi and Colin Cain. They´ve come together in front of another new starter, goalie Tennessee Peters.

"It´s been pretty good with all the young players we had," said Peters, a senior. "We found out how to work together."

But, Nigro said, it´s come from a simple motivation.

"You don´t want to give up goals in soccer," he said. "We knew our defense would be young and not a lot of people thought we´d do as well as we did last year.

"But we knew we would be strong."

However, defense isn´t just something that comes naturally to the Red Storm. Diaz insists its something they work at, and that the adjustment period this season initially came with some growing pains.

"We shifted around a lot throughout the beginning of the year," Nigro said. "But the past five or six games, we´ve really found the combination that works."

Peters agreed.

"We started out slow but rapidly improved as the season went on, and we knew that we´d improve, as long as we continued to play together," he said.

By the start of the playoffs, the Red Storm had given up just two goals -- one in a victory against South Portland and one in a win at Marshwood.

Scarborough shut out South Portland 4-0 in a regional quarterfinal, and in a 7-2 win over Portland on Saturday, Scarborough and Portland went into halftime tied 1-1. But the Red Storm scored three goals in a span of two minutes in the second half en route to earn another berth in the Western Class A championship game.

"This is where we want to be," Diaz said. "This is where we want to be after everything we do in the preseason. This is what the preseason is about, this is what all the work in the summer is about. Everything we do is to get to this point."

Staff Writer Rachel Lenzi can be reached at 791-6415 or at:
rlenzi@pressherald.com