By Bob Sutton
Special to The Alamance News
Members of the Western Alamance boys’ soccer team were all wet and it didn’t matter as the Warriors weren’t about to miss a chance to clinch the Mid-Carolina Conference championship with a rapid-fire string of goals Monday night.
Those all came in the second half of a 5-1 victory against host and rival Williams in a steady rain Monday night at Burlington Memorial Stadium.
The proverbial floodgates opened as the undefeated Warriors scored four goals in less than 20 minutes to open the second half.
“We talked about it before the game that if a goal doesn’t pop in the first 10 minutes, you can’t freak out,” Western coach Camden Brooks said. “It’s going to happen, and we had the ball a lot of the time. That was the halftime talk, it’s going to happen. It’s OK.”
It was much better than OK when the Warriors started clicking.
“We were pretty calm,” Western goalkeeper Eamon Hipps said. “The chances were there and we just have to put them away.”
Franky Maya and Grant Bacchus each provided two goals and one assist, Elio Anguiano scored once, and Edwin Anguiano supplied two assists.
Peter Kirk scored off Sebastian Vargas Aleem’s assist for second-place Williams to cut the margin to 2-1. That goal came in between two Western tallies in a four-minute stretch.
“They were overwhelming,” Williams coach Jeremy Krist said of the Warriors. “We played right into it.”
Other than a couple of solid scoring chances in the first half, Krist said the Bulldogs deviated from their plan. The Warriors were ready to pounce, with Brian Villanueva Herrera in the midfield and Bacchus often leading the charges.
“A lot of good players (for us in this game),” Brooks said. “And guys coming off the bench did a great job.”
Other results . . .
Last week at Cummings, Western won 9-0 with Maya scoring three times and Bacchus and Elio Anguiano both notching two goals to go with one each from Villanueva Herrera and Hipps.
- Aurelio Figueroa had two goals and Sebastian Vargas Aleem and Dawson Tanner both scored one last week when Williams won 4-1 at Eastern Alamance. Hudson Link scored for the Eagles.
- Southeast Alamance blanked visiting Graham 6-0 last week with two goals each from Noah Teabout and Zwe Maung and then trounced host Roxboro Person 9-0 on Monday, when Teabout scored four goals and Joel Lockhart notched two goals.
- Southern Alamance won 5-1 last week at Roxboro Person before falling 5-3 to visiting Cummings on Monday.
- Graham defeated visiting Eastern 2-1 on Monday.
- Clover Garden completed an undefeated Central Tar Heel 1-A Conference schedule with last Thursday’s 9-0 road victory against River Mill as Charlie Castaneda and Brady Whitt both scored four goals and Landon Campbell had the other goal. The Grizzlies moved to 17-3 overall, including 12 league triumphs.
State playoffs
Qualifying teams will learn their seeds with the unveiling of the brackets Sunday, two days later than originally scheduled. First-round games are slated for Monday or Tuesday with second-round games next Thursday.
