On Saturday, the Central Bears made the cross-county trek to take on Weeki Wachee in boys and girls soccer. In game one of the weekend double-header at the Hornets’ Nest, the Bears (5-5) emerged victorious by a comfortable 5-0 margin over the hosting Hornets (2-9).
“They executed the game exactly how we’ve been practicing in the first half,” said assistant coach Jonathan Souza. “They played very well. Came out, scored three in the first half. Very proud of them.”
The matchup started with Central applying some pressure early, but their efforts would not bear fruit until nearly 15 minutes into the contest when Romeo Fox fired a shot to the right side of the net past the goaltender for the game’s opening score.
The visitors nearly logged another quick score minutes later, but an offsides would negate an otherwise nice score. There would not be another goal for nearly 20 more minutes of game time when Giorgi Barkaia fired a successful penalty shot from inside the goalie box.
Following the intermission, Weeki Wachee picked up the pace and put more pressure on the visitors, but it would not lead to any points over the final 40 minutes. Instead, 30 minutes would pass with the Bears’ playing a defensive battle before Kaden Johston and Fox tacked on a couple of late scores finish out the game.
As Hornets Head Coach Michael Mullen noted, “they are very defensive minded […] If you’re not good with the ball and able to connect passes, you’re not going to get past them.”
Moving forward, the Bears coaching staff will be hoping to “button up our finishing and try to keep our high press,” added Coach Souza. With the end of the season in sight, Central will look to maintain their momentum and “play aggressive to the whistle.”
GAME TWO:
Later that afternoon, Weeki’s girls’ team (1-9) avenged the boys’ loss with a swift 8-0 dismantling of the Bears (0-10) shortly afterwards. The vast majority of the points scored were accrued in the first half, but the home team could likely have scored several more had the foreshortened half not been ended more than 30 minutes prematurely.
“More of the gameplan was just to play our game,” said Hornets’ Head Coach Jennifer St. Louis. “Come in with an open mind, an open set because we don’t know how they’re going to come in. We faced them before and how faced them before versus now could have been totally different.”
In the opening minutes of the matchup, Junior Adrianna Johnson got the scoring started early for the home team. The scoring deluge got going quickly in this matchup. Over the next few minutes, Senior Lesly Palacios logged a trio of goals back-to-back-to-back before assisting Johnson on her second score of the afternoon.
Johnson would only have to wait until about two minutes into the final frame to log her third goal. Roughly six minutes later, Palacios added a fourth score to her impressive outing and officially ended the game.
Coach St. Louis was obviously pleased with her team’s performance on Saturday, especially “the crossing and more of the finishing of the goals. Not just little taps. They’re actually real shots. I was really proud of that […] The coming games, we just got to work on pretty much our positioning, our passing, but overall, we’re doing better each game. First game to now, we’re doing extremely well.”
