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Fitch edges AAC rival after almost 69 scoreless minutes
Fitch edges
AAC rival
after almost
69 scoreless
minutes
By Greg Gulas
AUSTINTOWN
Austintown Fitch’s boys soccer team has outscored opponents 38-5 this season, but failure to register a goal in 12 days has resulted in two losses.
The Falcons’ only score Thursday — nearly 69 minutes into a game against arch-rival Boardman — put an end to two important streaks.
Zach Latimer’s goal at 11:09 of the second half lifted Fitch to a 1-0 victory over the Spartans in All-American Conference, Red Tier action at Falcon Stadium.
With the win the Falcons put an end to their two-game losing streak and in the process and marked the first time in program history that they’ve defeated the Spartans (1-6-3, 1-3-2) twice in a single season.
The first season for Boardman soccer was 1981.
The Falcons (7-2-0, 3-1-0) had already defeated the Spartans, 4-0 on Sept. 1 at the old Spartan Stadium in Boardman.
“Tommy Foley flipped the ball in the middle to Kyle Cyphert, who in turn flicked it to me as I was making my run to the middle,” Latimer said. “I was then able to place the ball in the bottom right corner of the goal for the score.”
Cyphert’s trickery earned him the assist on the play.
“I was facing Zach and the ball was above my head,” he said. “I was able to flick it with my head, it got behind the defender and Zach finished the play perfectly.”
The game featured just seven total shots on goal with only one by Boardman. It came midway through the opening half.
“This was a huge win for us. We communicated much better as a team and a lot of that credit goes to my defense because they kept everything in front of me,” Falcons goalie Hunter Klaus said. “If we expect to stay in the conference race, then we have to come out with more of an attitude, much like the attitude we had tonight.”
In the first game between the teams, Cyphert scored twice while Cameron Sobien and Zac Castro each added a goal.
It was a much-improved Spartans team according to Fitch head coach Ken Kilpatrick.
“In our first game they tried to go toe-to-toe while tonight they bunkered in, holding 10 guys back. That didn’t give us many opportunities to score. It was an excellent game plan,” Kilpatrick said. “The key tonight was that we didn’t get frustrated, and that could very easily have happened. The last two games we were all over each other, bickering with the ball bouncing all around in the rain but tonight we kept to the task. We remained focused. We definitely didn’t overlook them as it was a well-played game by both teams. They stuck to their game plan and we stuck to ours.”
For Spartans head coach Eric Simione, his team’s offensive struggles remain despite a continued improvement on both sides of the ball.
“The first time we played them they handled us pretty good. Despite our struggles offensively, we contained them for 70 of the 80 minutes played tonight,” Simione said. “We’ve improved since the first time we played, but we’re still a work in progress and we’ll learn from tonight. Offensively, we couldn’t come in here tonight and expect to outscore them. All we wanted to do was contain them and for the most part, we did that.”
Spartans goalkeeper Kevin Durkin rejected six of the Falcons’ seven attempts.