JAY — Looks can be deceiving sometimes.

Monday night, a three-goal lead  wasn’t as comfortable as the Spruce Mountain girls’ soccer team might have assumed it was. It also wasn’t nearly as daunting a deficit for the Monmouth Mustangs.

After building the early lead, the Phoenix had to hold off a late Monmouth charge to secure a 3-2 victory.

“Our conditioning showed up a little bit later in the half,” said Spruce Mountain coach Jon Blaisdell. “We got tired, and they started coming back on us. I also went defensive and changed up or formation. I wanted to try that. I probably went way too early with that.”

Monmouth (3-1) got goals from Danielle Burmann and Chelse Arsenault in the final 10 minutes but came up short in the comeback.

“For whatever reason, we don’t start with any fire,” said Monmouth coach Gary Trafton. “The second half, we kept grinding and grinding. We started to put some passes together and started forcing things. You can’t give a good team three goals and expect to win 4-3.”

Alexi Deering led the Phoenix (3-0) with two goals and an assist. She had numerous chances early as Spruce Mountain took the game at the Mustangs from the start. Deering had two promising bids stopped by keeper Natalie Young and had another hit the crossbar.

“I knew if we kept shooting we’d get one eventually,” said Deering. “We usually do.”

With 16:05 left, Deering made it 1-0 with a chip from the left side the found the right corner of the goal.

“Alexi puts us up 1-0 and the team relaxes a little bit,” said Blaisdell. “We seem to get in a rhythm after that.”

Monmouth had a strong spurt got a chance from  Kylie Kemp in front and from Ashley Coulombe on a cross.

“We had our chances in the first half,” said Trafton. “We had a couple of open nets.”

Deering made it 2-0 just 8:11 into the second half. She burst by two defenders and tucked it into the right side. then at 9:38, Deering’s cross was redirected in front by Megan Duval for the 3-0 lead.

“I think we just came out with more intensity,” said Deering. “We got a lot of shots on in the first half and nothing we going in.”

Monmouth started to generate more offense and produced some quality shots. Freshman Emily Keene did a nice job in net as the Mustangs plucked away. Kemp had a bid with 13:46 left and Sabrina Beck missed from the left side minutes later.

Then Burmann had a shot that went in off the hands of Keene to make it 3-1 with 9:53 left.

“She got unlucky and missed that goal,” said Deering. “I knew she was upset about it, but she stayed in there and kept fighting.”

Then with 7:11 remaining, Arsenault redirected a Kemp corner to make it 3-2. The Mustangs continued to rally right down to the closing seconds.  Keene made a nice save off a shot that bounced off a defender and toward the net. The Phoenix blocked a late corner kick and the Mustangs ran out of time.