The first county chase points of the 2022-23 sports season were on the line Thursday as Crawfordsville and Southmont squared off in boys soccer action. The tone of the game would be set by the host Athenians just mere minutes into the match as just two minutes into the county rivalry Manuel Olvera got CHS on the board. Again just two minutes later Crawfordsville would strike yet again as Ryo Nishina made it 2-0 CHS. The Athenians would go on to score seven goals in the first half and be able to soundly and convincingly defeat their county rival by a final score of 10-0.
Patrick Corado scored four goals to the lead the Athenians with Nishina getting a hat trick of his own. Along with Olvera’s goal both Matt Miller and Yeison Cifuentes added a goal each as five different Athenians contributed in the scoring. Andrew Jones assisted on three of the ten goals with Nishina and Olvera each getting an assist as well with Airton Schu notching an assist of his own.
“With this being not only a county game but a conference game as well, there were a few team goals of ours that were at stake tonight,” Crawfordsville coach Marcus Hale said. “We came at the beginning of the game and were able to do what we wanted and put a few in early. I do want to give credit to South. Only playing with 11 available guys is never easy. When you aren’t able to make substitutions that is really tough.”
Southmont (1-4, 0-2 SAC) was able to show some signs of life in the second half before the game was ended at the 20-minute mark due to the IHSAA mercy rule. Despite that Mountie coach Stephanie Kennedy noted how tough the loss felt on Thursday.
“It’s a little extra tough with knowing how well we played against them last year (a 1-0 CHS victory),” she said. “Even with the team that Crawfordsville has I think our skills and abilities are there. We just need to start working on the little things to make the overall game better. We may not be winning game after game but are a lot better team than the way we played tonight.”
Despite graduating 10 seniors from last year’s Sagamore Conference championship team, this years Athenian squad hasn’t missed a beat early on. In three games they’ve scored a total of 24 goals including double digits twice. With players like Nishina and Corado leading the way, Crawfordsville’s offense looks to be just as deadly as a year before.
“With having five different score that’s obviously a great thing,” Hale noted. “When you have that many capable guys who can put it in the back of the net, that allows teams to not just be able to focus on one player. I thought tonight we did a very good job of sharing the ball and creating scoring opportunities for many different guys. Patrick for example was injured last year and now we’re seeing what a dynamic player he is in terms of attacking the goal. He is applying what we’ve taught him and we’re glad he’s back and having the start that he is.”
For Kennedy and the Mounties this simply goes down as one of those games where you learn from it and move on to the next.
“I told them that in those last 20 minutes there’s some things we need to focus on not only for our next game but for the rest of the season.” she said. “We have to keeping building ourselves up and that comes down to moving off the ball and making short simple passes.”
Crawfordsville improves to 3-0 on the season and 1-0 in the SAC with the county win. Southmont will be back in action on Saturday as they host Covington while the Athenians will return to the pitch on Tuesday as they will face the same Covington squad at home.
