Every season, without fail, as the weather turns away from the sun of summer days and embraces the more frigid fall, Taft Head Coach Rebecca Swift leans into the season with her famous pre-game Witches Speech (trademark pending). Calling upon the lessons of Marvel’s spooky series “Agatha All Along,” Swift reminds the team that they are on their own version of the Witches’ Road. No doubt full of challenges — both mental and physical — this path is not one to tread alone, but together, as a team. The ominous gray skies above added to the gravitas of Swift’s Sermon on the Sideline and the Hogwartsy feel of Taft’s brooding campus foreshadowed the bit of magic to come over the course of the next 80 minutes. The first whistle blew and, like the start of a Slytherin-Gryffindor Quidditch match, the players took off (any faster of a speed of play and they may very well have started to fly). Three minutes into play, a Choate forward sent a shot from 30 yards out that senior goalkeeper Sofia Smith got just shy of enough of, putting Choate up 1-0. Yet, the Taft Lady Rhinos know how to respond. Thanks to that Good Game elixir that Ruth Amponsah ’28 cooked up in Potions Class earlier, which had clearly started to do its work, Amponsah received a cross from 10th grader Ellie Raveis to send a rocket just under the Choate crossbar. The Taft Squad buzzed around the field with all the energy of Platform 9 and 3/4 on the first day of school. The Rhinos and the Wild Boars held each other off in a competitive battle largely between the two 18-yard boxes, until, with 10 minutes left in the half, Elly Ouellette sent a cross in front of the Choate net, where senior Emma Strub proved she could make the ball disappear and then reappear in between the Choate pipes. Up 2-1 at the start of the back half of the game, cries of “don’t let up” coming from the Taft bench could be heard far and wide. Goalkeeper Sofia Smith showed she earned her top marks in Transfiguration class as she transfigured herself into a brick wall in Taft’s defensive end. The second half was no less of a battle than the first, but with just two minutes left in the match, Choate scored their second and final goal of the game following a chaotic moment in the box. All tied up at the end of the game, each side walked off the field with heads held high. Many thanks to the Choate squad for bringing their best, and, possibly, many more to Choate Head Coach Rick who shared a bag of his homegrown hybrid peppers with the Taft coaches. What better way to celebrate a great game than with omelets the next morning? Final score: 2-2.