It was the best of halves. It was the worst of halves. Solanco's boys soccer game vs. visiting Elizabethtown last Thursday was a tale of two periods. The Mules led 1-0 at intermission before E-town erupted for five second-half goals on the way to a 5-1 triumph. Elizabethtown's equalizer came just 41 seconds into the second half.
"It took the wind right out of (the Mules players)," Solanco coach Ron Miller said. "We were taking it to them for the first 25 minutes of the game. We had opportunities to go up even more than 1-0. The intensity was there. E-town is one of the favorites to win the section. But if you would've watched the first 25 minutes of the game you would've thought that we were the favorites. The intensity was there. They were going after all the loose balls. Then something happened right before the end of the first half. They were easing up and E-town was getting opportunities. They didn't connect on anything but the opportunities were there. So our halftime conversation was, 'We've got to clean this up.' And sure enough, they scored." Then they scored some more. The Bears went ahead on a penalty kick with 25:24 remaining. That started a string of four goals in a stretch of four minutes, 13 seconds. "The second half was a big time letdown. I'll be honest. There was a time after they tied it, maybe five to seven or eight minutes, that we started playing again. We had some shots and it looked like the momentum was shifting back in our favor. I was like all right, maybe that was the wake up call that they needed. But then the penalty kick was definitely the backbreaker. Once the penalty kick went, E-town just didn't ease up. They went full-throttle all the way to the end, which is the way I expect our kids to play, full-throttle. But E-town put their foot on our throat and we were toast. There's nothing I can do at that point because they had lost it. After the penalty, it was all she wrote." Solanco (0-2-1) started strong and grabbed the lead in the 9th minute off of a free kick. Cody Bleacher blasted a shot on goal. The Elizabethtown goalie was able to stop the shot but could not corral the rebound. The Mules' Luke Perry swooped in and poked the ball into the net. Midway through the first half, the tide began to turn. Elizabethtown clanged two shots off the crossbar and dominated the later stages of the period. Solanco tried to regroup during the break, but the Bears needed just 41 seconds to forge a deadlock. "I believed stepping on the field that we were going to beat them," Miller said. "We had them 1-0 at halftime. The wheels fell off in the second half. Very unfortunate." Solanco battled Lampeter-Strasburg to a 0-0 tie in double overtime Tuesday, September 2. Lampeter-Strasburg was undefeated in the regular season last year and was coming off a tie against Penn Manor. The Mules thought they had won when Perry put the ball in the net 57 seconds into overtime, but the apparent goal was nullified by a delayed offsides call. "The bench had already started storming the field," said Miller. "We thought we had taken down Goliath. David took down Goliath. And then the whistle was blown. It was heartbreak." Despite the disappointing second half against Elizabethtown, Miller says Solanco is close to getting over the hump. "If you watched the first two games we played you see we are almost there," he said. Comments are closed.
|
Archives
August 2023
Categories
All
|