EASTHAM — The Orleans Surf defeated Sandwich 5-4 on Thursday, July 17 under the lights at Nauset High School. That marked the Surf’s sixth win this season, putting them in second place among the four teams of the Cape Cod Women’s Soccer League with a record of 6-3-2. The Surf’s final game of the season, against first-ranked Barnstable (9-2-0), was set for Tuesday, July 22.
The win over Sandwich may have been harder than the Orleans team had expected. Sandwich had lost all its games so far this season, including a 4-2 loss to Orleans in June. On Thursday, Sandwich was working with only 11 players — just enough to field a team. Orleans had 14, allowing for substitutions.
Nevertheless, Sandwich put up a strong fight that had Orleans Coach Steve Austin occasionally grumbling on the sideline about his team’s too-careful play.
In the end, it was calculated bursts of aggression from Riley Hesse of Harwich and Sam Lomba of Provincetown that won Orleans the game. Each scored twice; Nadia Zaffanella of Wellfleet also scored once on a breakaway.
Lomba’s first point was the most memorable. A deflection in front of the goal sent the ball flying to the left, and she slid with a foot in the air to knock it back into the net.
“I had to just wing it,” Lomba said. “It took balance to even get my leg that high.”
Lomba said that 2025 is her 10th year since joining the team, though she’s been on and off the roster due to work commitments and the pandemic. At 32, she’s the oldest on the roster, which she said skews especially young this year.
“Everybody’s been getting better and better, which is nice to watch when you’re on the field with them,” she said.
Hesse is a newcomer, having joined the league this year. She’s 17 and goes to Monomoy High School, where she plays for coach Jenn Peterson — herself a former player for the Surf.
Hesse said she was nervous during the first game of the season — the Surf doesn’t schedule practices, so the match against Falmouth on June 12 was the first time the team had assembled. Nevertheless, “everyone made me feel very comfortable,” Hesse said, “and I think we’ve all been playing well together” since then.
That game ended in a 2-2 tie. Orleans won 3-0 the next time they played Falmouth, two weeks later.
Hesse’s comfort with her teammates was obvious from the outset on Thursday, when she scored on a cross from Zaffannella only a minute in.
This year is also Zaffanella’s first with the Surf — she’s a rising junior at Lafayette College in Pennsylvania, where she studies economics and data science and plays on the school’s soccer team. Her family moved to Wellfleet last year from Connecticut.
Playing with Hesse “is great,” Zaffanella said. “She has a lot of speed on the wing, and she’s able to read my through balls very well.” Thursday’s game wasn’t the first time the two have meshed to score: “We’ve just developed more and more chemistry as the season’s gone on,” Zaffanella said.
Because the Surf is the league’s only team representing the Outer Cape, many of its high-school and college athletes have played with or against each other on club and school teams. “My job as a coach is to find pairings that work, people that play well together, positions where players can be successful,” Austin said.
Austin has led teams at Cape Cod Tech and Sturgis Charter School, the latter for 17 years. He also ran a team in Chatham for the men’s amateur soccer league for about 15 years. Austin retired from Sturgis in 2022 but still sometimes coaches goaltenders at Monomoy High.
Austin was a founding members of the Women’s Soccer League, which was started in 2001 by Christine Mosher, a former Boston College soccer player.
Originally, the league was for adult players only, but Austin said he campaigned to allow high schoolers to join. Now the minimum age to play is 17.
Assistant Coach Dawn Johnson also plays on the team as a defender. This is her 9th year — it would have been her 10th if not for Covid, she said. Johnson lives in Eastham and has been with the Surf since her senior year at Nauset High.
“Some years we’re more offensive, some years we’re more defensive,” Johnson said. They might have played carefully on Thursday, but they don’t always play like that: “This year is definitely more of an offensive season, with a lot more possession going forward.”
According to the league’s website, the playoffs are scheduled for Thursday, July 24 at 5:30 p.m., with matchups and locations still to be determined. All four teams will automatically qualify. The final match will take place at 7:45 p.m. at DeConto Field at Sandwich High School.
