On Thursday night, Dec. 1, the Boone boys soccer team (1-0-5) took on the Freedom Patriots (7-0-3) on the Reservation.
At the beginning of the game, the Patriots kept a continuous offense, keeping the ball pressed on the Braves defensive for the first half. Junior Jonathan De Lucca and sophomore Austin Wendling kept up a strong defense throughout the game.
“We started off very aggressive, even if that meant a lot of yellow cards. Both teams had equal possession throughout the game, but we had more chances in the first half. We didn’t make too many critical mistakes [on defense] and we did a good job of playing it through to our forwards, despite the fact Freedom received many of the air balls,” Wendling said.
Before the end of the first half, senior Lucca Bertola received a yellow card. The Braves and the Patriots exchanged many shots in the first half. De Lucca shot and the ball went wide. Junior Eber Ramirez also took a shot on goal, but Freedom’s goalkeeper made the save. Junior Jake Stewartson made two saves back-to-back.
The boys began the second half as senior Matthew Barr scored bringing the score to 1-0. Stewartson saved another shot by the Freedom Patriots.
Later in the half senior Diego Herrera, sophomore Colin GoPaul and senior Hunter Reddick received a yellow card. The Braves defeated the Freedom Patriots 1-0.
“We knew that Freedom would be challenging and we knew that they wanted to win very badly due to the fact that both our head and assistant coach have coached at Freedom in the past. We tried to focus on defending our home field as a team, not individuals and getting our first win, which was much needed,” Wendling said.
The boys’ next soccer game is Thursday, Dec. 8, against Cypress Creek Bears (6-0-0) at 7:30 p.m. at Cypress Creek.