On a warm, sunny Tuesday, Sept. 18, the Washington Blue Lions and Miami Trace Panthers soccer teams concluded the first round of play in the Frontier Athletic Conference with a rivalry match at Washington High School.
Miami Trace won the match, 8-0.
The Panthers led 2-0 at the half.
Caleb Perry scored an unassisted goal with 6:20 remaining in the first half.
Drew Batson scored at the 4:45 mark, another unassisted goal for the Panthers.
Kyler Conn scored the first two goals of the second half. Assists for both goals were by August Langley (36-minute mark and 32:58 mark).
Noah Perry scored with an assist to Wyatt Cory at the 24:59 mark.
Kody Burns scored unassisted at 14:21.
Gavin Puckett scored with an assist to Sebastian Gurruchaga at the 10-minute mark.
The final goal came from Jaden Haldeman, assisted by Batson with 8:39 to play.
Miami Trace took 31 shots on goal to nine for the Blue Lions.
Miami Trace’s Justin Shoemaker had four saves. Washington’s keeper, Ryan Schwartz, had 11 saves.
Miami Trace has now won six games via the shutout, one away from the school record.
“It’s a rivalry game,” Miami Trace head coach Josh Thoroman said. “It’s a cliché, but, you really can throw the records out when these teams play. Both teams are going to play their hardest. They played great. They kept us off the board for 34 minutes. Hats off to them for how hard they played. They made us work super-hard.
Miami Trace has now scored 43 goals and allowed only five.
“The fewest goals a Miami Trace team has allowed in a season is 25, which was in 2016,” Thoroman said. “We’ve allowed five through nine games.
“We want to play team defense,” Thoroman said. “The effort and the energy is going to be there. Defensively, we kept our focus.”
“Overall, there were some flaws in the game, to lose 8-0,” Washington head coach Aaron Teter said. “But, the first half may be the best half we’ve played all year. Blaise (Tayese) had a couple of chances to score goals on a couple of shots that missed wide. Our defense was great in the first half.
“They had probably double the subs we had,” Teter said. “In the second half, we ran out of push a lot of times. Our kids kept working hard, but were having trouble keeping up at times. I credit our kids for continuing to work hard in the face of all that.”
Miami Trace (7-2-0 overall, 3-2 in the FAC) hosts Chillicothe Thursday at 6:45 p.m.
Washington (0-9-2 overall, 0-5 in the FAC) is at home against Hillsboro Thursday at 6:45 p.m.
