Cougar Soccer earns win over Whale Branch

Posted

By CINDY CROSBY

The Colleton County varsity boys soccer team earned a 7-5 win over Whale Branch Early College High School last week. The Cougars fell 5-0 against Region VII-AAAA opponent Beaufort High School. The Cougars are currently 2-6 overall and 0-6 in region competition.

Against Beaufort High School on March 22, the Cougars were shutout against the Eagles after trailing 2-0 at the half. “Again, we were collapsing back on ourselves and not pressuring forward,” said Coach Brian Reid following the game. “This led to us not creating an attack. At the start of the game, we had an opportunity to go up 1-0 as Jeremiah Howell picked off a Beaufort pass, but his shot was just wide. We worked on trapping their back pass and attacking quickly, then we fell back with the mid’s on top of our backs – which was not what we planned. May River pouncing us with an unrelenting attack several weeks ago has hung with our young team. Beaufort added goals late as we ran out of gas due to only four subs against a well-staffed Beaufort roster.”

The Cougars traveled to Whale Branch Early College High School on March 25 where they earned the 7-5 win. Howell scored 6 goals in the game and Westin Palmer add a goal and an assist. Avery Floresca, Mack Thomas, and Sam Kumar each recorded an assist. Azion White recorded 8 saves in the contest.

“The win over Whale Branch was a crazy game with a lot of goals being scored,” said Reid. “We had two starting backs out of the game, which created issues defensively. We went up 1-0 minutes into the contest from a clearance by Mack Thomas springing Jeremiah Howell on a counterattack past their defense. Minutes later, Whale Branch tied the match on a poor clearance going directly to their player, who then made a perfect pass through our defense, allowing one of their players to go one-on-one versus our keeper. We pulled away in final ten minutes taking a 4-2 lead at half.”

“Whale Branch was physical and launching balls past our defense,” said Reid. “After the half, we did a much better job of pressuring the passes and not letting them get free looks. We pulled away and built a 7-3 lead with about 15 minutes left. We only had two subs for the game, before one of them strained his ankle, leaving us with one. They kept throwing players out at us and we were tiring and hanging on the last 15 minutes. Then, we started getting goal hungry and did not follow our plan, which was no more than two touches and a pass. Because of this, we were lucky to get out of there with a win. Evan Stroble did a good job filling in for Chandler McMillan at center back. I was impressed with his performance as he had not been in that position before.”

Colleton County was scheduled to host May River High School on March 29 at 7 p.m. and Lucy Beckham on April 1 at 7 p.m. at Cougar Stadium.