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Youngs ignites SR
Freshman scores three goals as Raiders pummel Rebels
By KEVIN Connelly
COLUMBIANA
In what was an impressive offensive showcase by South Range, Tuesday’s Inter-Tri Country League boys soccer showdown turned out to be more of a beatdown of Crestview.
Raiders freshman Brandon Youngs scored the match’s first goal and then capped off a memorable performance with two late second-half goals to register his first career varsity hat trick in a 5-1 victory.
“Wow ... wow,” said junior Cole Frank, who had the Raiders’ other two goals. “I’m speechless. That was an amazing performance by him.
“Just his ability to run around people and put the ball in the net.”
The person who was perhaps the least surprised at Youngs’ breakout game was standing on his sideline. South Range coach Joe Staffeld has been waiting for this moment for a while.
“No, I expected it,” Staffeld said. “I’ve been watching him since he was 6, so I knew what was going to happen this season once he came up to play varsity for us.”
Both teams came into the match with identical 3-0 records, but South Range appeared to be the better team from the opening whistle.
With a good back-and-forth pace early, chances were building for each team. The Raiders (4-0) converted first in the 17th minute on Youngs’ first of the match.
Youngs worked his way past a defender down the right side and made a hard cut to the middle of the field. Getting Crestview goalie Scott Murray moving to his right, Youngs sent the ball back to the near post.
“This game was a great game, a good team to play against; I mean this is our rivalry,” Youngs said. “Coach ran us a lot to make us get ready for this game and it paid off.”
The score remained 1-0 until the 43rd minute, just after the start of the second half. Off a free kick, a Crestview player was shoved while in the air inside the box to earn a penalty kick. Senior Joshua McGoogan calmly stepped up and converted the opportunity to tie the game.
Four minutes later, Crestview (3-1) returned the favor and fouled Frank on a loose ball inside the box. His penalty shot had enough pace on it to ricochet off the back post inside the net and bounce all the way back outside the box.
“I wanted the goal so badly,” Frank said. “I was not going to miss that one. I was ready.”
In the 55th minute, South Range put a stranglehold on the game when Frank scored his second of the evening. This one took some of the pressure off the Raiders and their goalie Brandt Rothbauer, who made eight saves.
Crestview coach Jon Kinkead was upset following the loss at what he saw as his team getting beat all over the field.
“We lacked competitive nature or whatever you want to call it,” Kinkead said. “We lacked compete, while they were all over the field contesting everything.
“We get to play them again and I think the result might be different the second time around if we do a little bit of soul searching, but ... I don’t know. It’s just frustrating sometimes.”
Youngs’ first exclamation point came in the 70th minute when he fired a shot through the outstretched arm of Murray.
The hat trick was completed with three minutes left on the clock in another display of beautiful dribbling through and around a host of defenders.
“I was not going to pass that up,” Youngs said with a big smile. “I was gonna score that third goal.”
South Range is in position early to control its own fate in the conference. But as Staffeld made sure to remind his players of after the win, there’s still plenty of soccer to be played.
“It puts us in a really strong position,” Staffeld said. “We need to manage the mindset of this team now. We don’t want to get any kind of overconfidence.”