3/20/08

Emerald boys rock Bulldogs
http://www.indexjournal.com/articles/2008/03/20/sports/sports01.txt
Kevin Fiorenzo, The Index-Journal (Greenwood, SC)

Against an inferior team, the concern for coaches is always whether their team will drop its standard of play.

Fortunately for the Emerald High School boys soccer team, that didn’t happen Thursday night.

The Vikings gave a forceful demonstration for why they are undefeated so far this season, routing Newberry 15-0 at Frank Hill Stadium.

Walter Nunez led Emerald (9-0 overall, 4-0 Region 3-AA) with four goals and three assists, while Nick Shahan and Joseph Taylor scored twice. Taylor and J.C. Spearman also each had two assists.

Though Emerald had six goals in the first half, three coming in a 10-minute span, the Vikings didn’t let up, tacking on nine more in the final 40 minutes.

“I think against a team like this, it’s really doing the simple things right and I think we did that today,” Emerald assistant coach Colin Kent said. “Maybe a little bit of a slow start, but as soon as we got into the flow of things I thought we showed our quality.

“It wasn’t like we dropped down to their level, we kept our level of play. It’s always a worry as a coach when you play lesser teams, that you’ll play to their standard, and I think we kept away from that.”

Through the beginning of the first half, Kent and Emerald coach Brock Scott opted to take a hands off approach and the Vikings responded with four goals, two by Nunez. Kent said he was pleased by the team’s effort to not try to do too much offensively.

“I think for the first 20 minutes, coach Scott and I just let the guys play,” Kent said. “We didn’t say a word. We let them see how they could play without being coached.

“They did OK. They were a little bit slow to start with as you saw in the game, but as it progressed, they got more confident. They started playing their game instead of trying to dribble through 20 players and score.”

The Vikings got off to a slow start again in the second half and didn’t score their first goal of the period until the 12th minute, on Hunter Riddle’s unassisted score.

Defensively, Emerald struggled very little and managed to keep the ball on its end of the field for much of the game. Charlie Lambour had one save in the net for the Vikings, while the Bulldogs made no scoring attempts on backup goalkeeper Shahan in the second half.

With a tough stretch of games coming up next week in the Palmetto Cup, Thursday’s game was good precursor for the upcoming slate where the Vikings will be looking to maintain their unbeaten record.

“It gets everyone relaxed for those bigger games,” Kent said. “We’ve got a big task ahead of us next week, some really tough games, and I think the boys are ready. They’ve worked hard in practice and they’re ready to go.”