MTZ boys soccer wins two, ties one
Thomas Kanemaru looks to pass in a 6-1 win against Richland County.
By BLAKE FAITH
Staff Writer
The Mt. Zion boys soccer team finished with two wins and one draw last week.
Against Richland County, the Braves started off slow, but took a 1-0 lead when Richland County gave away an own-goal eight minutes into the match.
Nine minutes later, Jacob Harmison shot a shot that went off the goalkeeper’s glove, but Hayden Shumaker was right there and scored the rebound goal to give the Braves a 2-0 lead.
Paolo Davi scored a goal for the Tigers that cut the Braves lead to 2-1 in the 29th minute.
In the 34th minute of the game, Vladimir Kochoi stepped on to the pitch off the bench. Kochoi got to the rebound and headed in the goal to give the Braves a 3-1 halftime lead.
“It was good to see, it makes the coach look like a genius when he puts the sub in and he scores the gold, but that wasn’t my doing,” Head coach Scott Crawford said. “He did a nice job finding the ball and putting it in the back of the neck.”
The Braves increased their lead eight minutes into the second half. Thomas Kanemaru fired a pass to Shumaker who shot and scored right outside the 18-yard line to give the Braves a 4-1 lead. Ten minutes later, Greg Frazier shot and scored a goal off a rebound that gave the Braves a 5-1 lead.
The Braves finished off their scoring with Kochoi powering through the contact and dished a pass to Oliver Coleman who shot and scored.
“I think we started out a little rough. we seem to not be a first half team currently,” Coach Crawford said. “But we played better in the second half and got organized and moved the ball and did the little things that you gotta do to win.”
The Braves improved to 11-2-4 overall and. 6-0-2 in conference play. The Braves will face Lincoln and Mattoon this week.
“We’ll take a couple days and get some rest,” Coach Crawford said. “We got a lot of minutes on our legs, so we’ll take a little bit of a break, but then we’ll get back at it. We have gotta be able to beat good teams moving towards regionals and that’s what we’re trying to do.”
