East Lyme — Sometimes in life, you just have to let it fly and see what happens.

East Lyme High School's Nick Esposito had possession of the ball way, way, way off to the right of the Ledyard goal late in Thursday night’s boys’ soccer game. The senior didn’t see any of his teammates near the goal mouth, so he opted to let it rip and launched a shot.

Esposito’s shot sailed up and up before descending into the left side of the Colonels’ net, the crescendo to the Vikings’ 3-0 win in an Eastern Connecticut Conference Division I matchup.

“I was definitely looking for the corner (kick) first, then I didn’t see anybody in the box,” Esposito said. “So then I tried chipping the goal. I kept doing it and I kept doing it (all game) and one went in.”

East Lyme was ahead 2-0 when Esposito scored, but its previous two goals didn’t get the kind of reaction his did.

“That was unbelievable. Jeez,” East Lyme coach Paul Christensen said. “That’s not going to happen too often, though. Most of those shots are over (the net), but we’ll take that tonight. I’ll give him credit tonight. That was an outstanding shot.

“I asked him if it was a cross and (he said), ‘no, that was a shot.’ That was kind of the exclamation point for our team.”

Juniors Alec Kosinki and Matthew Kung also scored for East Lyme (5-2-2, 4-0-1).

Ledyard is 5-4, 1-3.

The Vikings were in attack mode far more than Ledyard during the game. They didn’t hesitate to move to the ball and, when they got control, they used their speed to get distance on the Colonels.

“We definitely want to be in this (ECC) tournament,” Esposito said. “We wanted those two points (for the win). So all night we were like, ‘you’ve got to be physical, you’ve got to be physical. You want these. You want these.’ We were looking for those crosses and I feel like our guys really stepped it up from getting killed by Stonington (a 2-0 loss on Sept. 30). We didn’t like it, so we wanted to get a win out here.”

Ledyard coach Bill Glenney likes this year’s team as much as any as he’s had over 15 seasons, but one thing that’s vexed him is that his players are not aggressive enough consistently.

“They’re a great group of guys,” Glenney said. “Our physical play is one thing that is lacking. It’s not a lack of size. We’ve got quite a bit of size on this team, but we’ve just never been a physical team. That hurt us a bunch tonight. It seemed like every ball in the midfield just popped up to a white shirt (East Lyme). It was just relentless. They hit the ball and it was, ‘see you later. We’re not waiting around.'

“East Lyme, they’re just good. They were just good tonight. It’s difficult to play against a team when they’ve got 11 guys on the field who just move and go. We’re not the fastest team in the world. They broke us down constantly throughout the game.”

n.griffen@theday.com