The No. 12 seeded Miami Trace boys soccer team (5-7-2) hosted the No. 21 seeded Piketon Redstreaks (0-10) on Monday, Oct. 16 in a Sectional Semifinal contest.

Less than a minute into the contest, Ian Mavis connected on a goal to give the Panthers a 1-0 lead. The assist came from Seth Thompson.

At the 36:17 mark, Sekou Mara drilled one into the back of the net to extend the lead to 2-0, with the assist going to Pierce McCarty.

Mavis added a second goal at the 35:25 mark to make it 3-0, with an assist from Mara.

Landon Burns would join the scoring party with 35:03 left in the opening half with an assist from Mara yet again.

Mara added his second goal of the evening at the 20:06 mark after weaving around several defenders and finding a hole in the back left corner of the net, making it 5-0.

Spencer Smith would score a goal just seconds later at the 19:46 mark to make it 6-0. The goal was assisted with a well-placed kick from McCarty.

Ian Rayburn would get into the scoring column after another on-target pass from McCarty led him towards the goal where he was able to finish to make it 7-0.

The final goal of the evening came from Rayburn at the 15:22 mark of the opening half. The goal was assisted by Mara, his third of the evening.

The Panthers saw themselves ahead 8-0 at the half. According to a new rule implemented this year for postseason soccer contests, if any team holds a lead of eight or more goals in the second half of a game, the contest is over.

With Miami Trace holding an eight goal lead, the match was declared final and the Panthers earned an 8-0 shutout victory.

Miami Trace head coach Josh Thoroman spoke following the victory.

“We didn’t really know what to expect out of Piketon. This is the fifth year of their boys program being back. We have 18 healthy guys and we wanted all 18 to get a lot of time on the field tonight and we were able to rotate guys around to try and get some of them a goal. One of our major goals for tonight was to achieve a shutout. We hadn’t gotten one this season to to post the shutout was big for us.”

He spoke about the upcoming Sectional Championship game against No. 5 seeded Zane Trace (9-2-1). The Panthers played Zane Trace in the final game of the regular season on Wednesday, Oct. 11 and fell 8-2 to the Pioneers.

“I’ll just say that we knew that the game against them that counts is on Wednesday night. We played a lot of bodies against them and moved some people around. They didn’t see our true formations, necessarily, or what our true game plan is. We hope it will be a much different game come Wednesday night. They didn’t take their starters out until under seven minutes to go in the game, so we got to see a lot of what they do. We got to study, and we are gonna be watching film, and our boys are hungry because that game is very well fresh in their memory. We will be motivated.”

The Sectional Championship will be played on Wed., Oct. 18 at 6 p.m. at Zane Trace High School.