From Coach Ed Berberich:
The MCHS Soccer Aces hosted the Massac County Patriots Saturday morning, grabbing a quick lead and ultimately winning their 7th straight match by a final score of 8-0. Britton Heinrich scored in the 6th minute on an assist from Beau Belt. Checco Terna scored 3 minutes later assisted by Heinrich, followed by Stipp scoring in the 14th minute on an assist from Iacopo Clementi. Clementi scored in the 18th minute with Heinrich getting another assist. Clayton Halbig scored in the 25th minute on an assist from Clementi. Heinrich then scored twice more for the hat trick, once again assisted by Clementi on one of the goals and with Rayce Loudermilk setting up the other, for the 7-0 lead. In the shortened 2nd half, Ivan Holt scored the final goal of the game, bringing the score to 8-0. The Aces took 26 shots, 17 on frame, took 3 corners, created 10 chances, and had 7 interceptions. The Patriots took 4 shots, 3 on frame.
We're still working on pressuring the ball high up the field a little quicker at the start of these matches, but at least we're scoring early in most of these games to put them away quickly. With the various attacking talent we have up top and in the midfield the other teams can't key in on just one guy, or even a few guys for that matter. They're all playing off each other pretty well at the moment, so it makes for a pretty dynamic attack right now, with the possibility of goals and attacking passes coming from any of those guys at any time. When you add in the defenders and defending mids who are doing a great job of denying the opposition much to work with, winning the ball and starting off our attacks, it adds up to a complete team effort so far. We rely on the defenders to pressure the ball in the back, win it quickly if they can, and then start us off on attack, and their passing from the back has been a big key to our possession of the ball. And when those guys are able to push up field a bit, they're pretty good in attack in their own right, and they give the other team a lot to contend with. We've also got a great goalie in the back who, because of our defense, hasn't had a whole lot to do so far in terms of blocking shots. He's been handling the ball with his feet much more than his hands, which is always a good sign of the team in front of him. We're expecting the games to start getting tougher now, beginning with our next match at Mt Vernon Indiana. In my mind, that's still a Big 8 match and those are usually tough, so it'll be interesting to see how we respond to the heightened intensity. The Rams will probably be the strongest team we've faced since Teutopolis so we'll need to be ready to step it up against them, and stick together when things may not be coming as easily to us as they have been.
The Aces won the JV match as well, by a score of 2-1. Landon Lagow scored first, assisted by Eli Bertram. The Patriots then scored to tie it up at 1-1 before Gavin Smith took the lead back for the Aces, with what turned out to be the game-winning goal. The JV guys had to play a man down for a while due in part to an injury we've sustained to one of our younger players, but despite that, they ended up scoring first and overall played a pretty good game. As in the last JV contest, the younger guys are playing with a lot of the right ideas and passing the ball around fairly well. They've been learning how we want to play and they're executing it pretty well considering they're still only 2 games in to the JV season. With the way we've been playing at the varsity level, we've been able to get these guys some good minutes in some of those matches, which helps these guys individually, but also us as a team.
The latest win brings the Aces' record to 7-0 on the season. The next match is Monday night at 5:30 pm at Mt Vernon IN. That's followed by another road trip on Thursday night to Mt Vernon IL for another Varsity/JV split.
