The Washington Blue Lion varsity soccer team began Sectional tournament play on a chilly, breezy, overcast and otherwise dreary Monday, Oct. 15 at Washington High School.
Their opponent was a team that had previously played last Thursday, the Mustangs of Westfall High School.
In that game, the Blue Lions defeated the Mustangs, 7-0.
Monday night, in the Sectional semifinals, Washington again rang up a 7-0 victory over Westfall.
The Blue Lions improve to 3-12-2 on the season and will now face the No. 1 seed in the tournament, the Miami Trace Panthers. The two Fayette County rivals will play at Miami Trace High School Thursday at 5 p.m. for a Sectional championship and the chance to play either Unioto or Alexander in the District semifinals at Logan High School on Wednesday, Oct. 24 at 5 p.m.
Monday’s match was all Blue Lions, from start to finish.
As they did on Thursday, Washington led the Mustangs at the half, 4-0.
Blaise Tayese scored what proved to be the winning goal for Washington, the first of the match, with the assist going to Jaxson Singleton.
The next goal was from Ethan Smith, that assist also going to Singleton.
Grant Kuhlwein scored the third goal of the match, with the assist going to Tayese.
Trent Langley scored an unassisted goal to close out the first half.
In the second half, Tayese scored his second goal of the match (unassisted).
Kuhlwein scored to make it 6-0, the assist going to Reilly Downing.
Josh Cartwright scored his first career goal for Washington for what proved to be the final tally of the match. That goal was unassisted.
“In this game, our midfield did a good job just dominating,” Washington head coach Aaron Teter said. “We were able to keep the ball on offense. Westfall has a good defense in front of the goal, but, we spent a lot of time in that area and eventually got seven goals out of it. Our defenders in the midfield just kept pushing the ball forward, continually.”
Garrett Deweese got the shutout in goal for Washington.
“Garrett hasn’t been scored on in two-and-a-half games now,” Teter said. “He’s on a little bit of a roll.”
What about a third meeting of the season between the Panthers and Blue Lions?
“Miami Trace presents a very big challenge,” Teter said. “They’re the No. 1 seed in our bracket. Both times we played them, we gave them a really good battle in the first half, but, eventually, their talent won out and they beat us easily in the second half of both games. I believe the halftime scores were 2-0 and 3-0 and they ended up winning 9-0 here and 8-1 there.”
