East Lyme — East Lyme, the defending Eastern Connecticut Conference Division I regular-season and tournament boys’ soccer champion from a season ago, lost 11 seniors from that team.

And yet the Vikings have started the 2023 season as very much the favorite, outscoring their first two opponents by a 13-0 margin, including Saturday night’s 8-0 victory over Old Lyme in the second game of a doubleheader at East Lyme High School.

East Lyme midfielder and senior co-captain Dominik Stefanski explains the phenomenon:

“We’ve been very closely knit since 8 years old, since U9,” Stefanski said. “We’ve been playing together our entire lives and we’ve been waiting for senior year our whole life. We’ve been waiting for us to be the seniors and for us to take charge of this town and this soccer organization.

“I’m just happy it’s finally here and we’re finally proving to people what we can do.”

Stefanski, one of 17 seniors listed on the East Lyme roster, was one of eight different goal scorers Saturday for the Vikings (2-0). He joined AJ Montejano, Robert Stoddard, Gabe Delgado, Brant Lionetti, Ryan Wargo, Luke Salan and Nate Blankenship in registering goals.

Lionetti’s goal, with 2 minutes, 45 seconds to play in the first half, came on a bicycle kick, his back to the goal, touching off a celebration among his teammates, who swarmed him. That made it 4-0 at halftime, the same margin by which East Lyme led at halftime of its 5-0 opening day win against Waterford.

It was the season-opening game for Old Lyme, which lost All-Shoreline Conference goalkeeper Jonah Lathrop to graduation.

In addition to Stefanski, East Lyme is captained by Salan, Brendan Osso and Tristan Seguin. Stefanski did not play as a junior, sidelined with an ACL injury, but attended each practice and game, hoping for this moment.

“We’re a pretty talented group,” East Lyme coach Paul Christensen said, “probably one of the better ones we’ve had in a long time and there’s been some good ones.”

Christensen, in his 35th season, said it’s too early to tell where things go from here, but he’s looking forward to building something special.

“The good thing about them is eight guys scored today, it wasn’t one guy, so it’s not like they can mark one guy. It’s going to be a difficult team to defend. The other positive is I’m probably 18 kids deep,” Christensen said.

“... The same thing happened with Waterford. We scored like three goals in eight minutes and tonight we scored three goals in a very short time (three in 8:42 to start the second half). That’s a positive, I think; we’re never going to be out of a game and the defense is pretty solid. Where it goes, I don’t know, but there’s a talented group of kids that are on the team.”

v.fulkerson@theday.com