Staff photo / Brad Emerine
Harding senior Soraeya Loveland, left, passes to a teammate during the second half of the Raiders’ 7-0 loss to Boardman on Monday night at Mollenkopf Stadium.

WARREN — The six seniors on the Warren G. Harding girls soccer team were honored prior to Monday night’s game against Boardman at Mollenkopf Stadium.

But the festivities were about the only thing the home fans had to cheer about once the game started, as Boardman dominated the field.

The Spartans scored five times in the first half en route to a 7-0 victory.

“Boardman is an excellent team and it’s tough because we’ve started against three very good teams in Mooney, Ursuline and now Boardman,” said Harding coach Kevin Brown, whose side dropped to 0-3. “Mooney and Ursuline are very good, but we competed well against both of them, especially in the first half of both games. But tonight (Boardman) totally dominated us, and it’s unfortunate because it was senior night.”

“I felt we played a good second half against Ursuline after we fell behind 3-0. We lost 4-1. We were pretty competitive with Mooney for a good deal of the game before they turned it on as the second half wore on and we lost 7-4.”

The Raiders had no answers against the Spartans, as junior striker Kathryn Taghaboni scored or assisted in four of her team’s five first-half goals. She finished with three goals and a pair of assists. Sarah Blasco opened the scoring with 30:40 left in the half, and Taghaboni scored twice during Boardman’s four-goal onslaught in a span of 2:48. Kendell Scriber and Nadia Rawhneh also scored in the deluge.

“Kathryn is incredible, a great striker,” Boardman coach Mark D’Eramo said. “She holds the ball up and has some of the best finishing I’ve ever seen on the high school level. She can score with her head or either foot. She’s an all-around great striker. She’s had an amazing start and we’re looking forward to her continuing to do great things.”

Blasco and Taghaboni both had second-half goals as well.

Brown altered the Raiders normal lineup on senior night.

“Everyone has kind of gone to making senior night an early home game because no one is certain how long the season will last. So we had a bit of a different lineup out there, but that’s no excuse. We just need to continue to work and get better. But boy, Boardman was excellent tonight.

“We’re very inexperienced in the back. Our two goalkeepers are a freshman and a sophomore. They’re young and they’re alternating starts. We’re also very inexperienced everywhere. We normally start one senior in the back, a senior midfielder and a junior forward. That’s about it.”

Brown thought his squad was a bit tentative with the new lineup.

“(Boardman) would send it to the outside, we’d shift over to cover that and, with a quick pass or two, they got it back in the middle,” he said. “We didn’t have enough pressure getting back over there and they got some pretty clean look on our goalkeepers. They probably scored three or four of their goals that way early, until we made the adjustment.

“(Boardman) did a really good job exploiting our weakness. They’re experienced and they’re aggressive. We were a little tentative and that let them be first to the ball 90 percent of the time. We’d back off them and they’d take their shots.”

Following the tough first half, the Raiders competed better in the second half.

“We’re a young team on the field,” Brown said. “We’ve got 23 kids and 15 are freshmen and sophomores. We’ve got six seniors and two juniors. I think the girls are making some progression. We had a couple key injuries out there already, and (Boardman) really took it to us. They have a lot of experience and their coach was the Coach of the Year in the league last year. They’re just a well-coached team. We’re young and they made us pay for it.”

That’s not to say that Brown didn’t see some good things at times.

“I thought Cescie Shesko played pretty well,” he said. “She’s a freshman who we just moved from another position to sweeper. She’s done really well. We’ve got some young girls who are stepping up, but it’s going to take some time for them to adjust to the varsity level against great competition.

“But we’re working on it and trying to build a foundation for the future. We’re looking to get better, but we play in a very strong conference.”

The Raiders will play host to Champion on Saturday before getting back into conference play next week.

It was the first win for Boardman (1-0-2) after a pair of frustrating results.

“We faced a lot of adversity in our first two games and came away with a pair of 1-1 ties against Lake and Fitch, and in each of them, the goal we allowed was on a (penalty kick),” D’Eramo said. “So we wanted to clean up the back and not have up any opportunities to foul in the box. You know, we didn’t play poorly in either of the ties, it was just a few anxious moments in the box where we fouled and that’s the difference between being 3-0 and 1-0-2.

“We got back to the basics and come out here and played the way I know we can and put together a clean sheet. Our passing was good and we executed the game plan the way we wanted to. It was a good building game for us moving forward because we have some big matches coming up.”

Boardman keeper Serene Khatib made just one save as the Spartans had a 30-3 advantage in shots, including a 19-1 margin in shots on goal.