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Big Red boys top South booters, 4-1

Parkersburg South’s Julio Lemas (5) chases Parkersburg’s Isaiah Owen (4) with the ball during a boys soccer match Saturday afternoon at the Erickson All-Sports Facility. The host Patriots scored first, but the Big Reds won, 4-1. Photo by Steve Hemmelgarn.

PARKERSBURG — Host Parkersburg South may have scored the first goal just a minurte and a half into a boys soccer match Saturday afternoon, but Parkersburg tallied the next four goals en route to a 4-1 win over the Patriots as the Big Reds prevailed at the Erickson All-Sports Facility.

PHS improved to 11-1-2 on the season with the win, while South’s record is now 3-7.

The Patriots started the game with a quick goal as Bailey Way knocked the ball into the net at the 38:25 mark of the first half.

But the Big Reds weren’t to be upstaged for long as just four and a half minutes later at 33:54, Anthony Fleshman kicked the ball in off a throw-in by Parker Millert to tie the count at 1-1.

And PHS added another goal after three more minutes of play at 30:58 when Ashton Farnsworth hammerd in a shot from 20 to 25 yards out to give his team the lead, at 2-1, that it would never relinquish.

At 23:39, the margin became 3-1 as Fleshman notched his second goal of the day with an assist from Isaiah Owen.

South had a opportunity at 14:50, but Ethan Nedeff’s shot from the right side went wide left across the front of the goal as the half ended 3-1 in the Big Reds’ favor.

In the second half, Patriot keeper Chase Hawkins displayed his talent at stopping shots on goal with a variety of moves — sliding, diving, jumping or on his knees — to repeatedly thwart PHS, which continually peppered him with balls that he batted away or halted from getting in the net.

But one got past Hawkins for the lone second-half goal as two back-to-back Big Red shots in succession that ricocheted off South defenders finally got put back into the net by Ian Domenick at 23:36.

Still though for the game, Hawkins was credited with 20 saves, while his Big Red counterpart Jacob McKnight notched six. PHS had 17 shots on goal to South’s four.

“I give credit to South, their keeper was outstanding and they are becoming a pretty good team,” said PHS head coach Don Fosselman. “But I thought we came through and scored, and also did some nice things with the ball. We just couldn’t get many in, but that’s a credit to South. They played very well.”

Fosselman, though, was “pleased that we had a lot of attacks today, that we threaded the ball through. And we had chances and quite a few shots — and that’s really the important things.”

For South head coach Eric Stump, “we played with a lot of intensity out there today, but had a couple breakdowns in the middle of the field.

“We want to continually get better as we go. I wish we could have started at this level and progressd from here, but it doesn’t work that way.’

Last year, in Stump’s first as head coach, “the team was very young, we only had two seniors and we had a lot of learning to do,” he said. “We have three seniors this year and more work ahead of us, so keep watching because there’s more to come.”

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