Playing without three starters, including two captains, the Mississippi School for Mathematics and Science boys soccer team did what every other team does in a pinch: play great defense and expect a guy who had never scored a goal to come up big.
Unconventional, perhaps, but it kept the Blue Waves undefeated through four games.
Junior Elliot Mathers scored 9 minutes into the second half, and an impressive defensive effort made that goal stand up as the Blue Waves defeated Booneville 1-0 on Friday night at Lowndes County Soccer Complex.
Nothing before that goal indicated that either team was going to get on the scoreboard, but all of a sudden there was Mathers with the ball, one defender and the Blue Devils’ keeper between him and a memorable moment.
“Right before the goal, I was thinking to shift back into defense, and then I saw my friends pushing it up, so I started pushing it up as well,” Mathers said. “Chingun (Tsogt-Erdene) made a great play, and I kind of shoved my way through the goalie and that defender, and I got that goal through everything.”
It appeared Mathers shot twice, once to evade the defense and once to get the ball over the line. As he explained it, that’s more or less what happened.
“I tapped the ball to the net, and then I hit the ball again because it hit the goalie and it fell on the ground,” Mathers said. “So I had to tap it in the goal.”
The goal produced an extremely enthusiastic response from the MSMS sideline, which was missing captains Aaron Sharp and Nicholas Djedjos and another starter, Nicholas Popescu. Blue Waves coach Armando Leyva said the reaction stemmed from Mathers’ role on the team, the guy everybody wants around.
“He’s ‘that guy,’” Leyva said. “He started this semester basically taking soccer from his childhood. All of us could tell he started from just bouncing the ball. He’s a really good athlete, but his soccer skills were not there when we started the semester.”
That might explain the almost giddy reaction from his teammates. The goal prompted one player to say, referring to Sharp, “Wait until Aaron hears about this.” Not that they won, not that they pitched a shutout, not that they’re 2-0 in the region, but that Elliot Mathers scored a goal.
“This is my first goal ever,” said Mathers, who came into the game late in the first half and left after his goal finding time to strain a muscle along the way. “I only played a little when I was 9.”
His night over with more than 30 minutes still to go, Mathers joined an increasingly anxious sideline as the Blue Waves tried to preserve the 1-0 lead.
“Our defense took the weight of the game,” Leyva said. “We’re usually a team with a very strong midfield, and usually the midfield controls, but today we had some changes because some guys couldn’t be with us.”
But the MSMS defense stepped up in front of keeper Gordon Welch. Several hard shots were blocked before they could get through, especially down the stretch.
“He did a really good job,” Leyva said of Welch. “Toward the end, Booneville was all in. They shortened the field against us, so Gordon had to play a small area, basically on the line. He had two or three really good interventions, maybe not a big save, but it was the positioning.”
Welch’s most dramatic save came late, when a ball was sent into the box from a distance and headed upward by a Booneville forward. Welch leaped to snare the ball moments before the final whistle.
MSMS had the occasional scoring chance — Raeed Kabir put a hard shot on the Booneville goal that generated a rebound chance during the 32nd minute, but the Devils’ defense cleared it; one minute later, Carter Miller, who did the work to get the ball to Kabir on the previous shot, fired a hard shot from about 20 yards that just went over the crossbar — but the Blue Waves’ defense, and Mathers, was the story of the game.
Girls soccer
Booneville 5, MSMS 2: The Blue Waves girls team also went into Friday night undefeated, but after taking a 2-1 lead early in the second half it was all Blue Devils.
“We weren’t communicating very well,” MSMS girls coach Chuck Yarborough said. “A couple of their goals came on miscommunications in our backline and with our goalkeeper. And that happens.
“As juniors and seniors only, our girls have played together for about a month and a half.”
MSMS took its only lead of the game 5 minutes into the second half, when senior captain Madison Johnson beat a defender about 20 yards from the net, dribbled in on the Booneville keeper and sent a shot into the lower left corner for a 2-1 edge. Johnson had scored the Blue Waves’ first goal during the 36th minute.
“Madison’s a finisher,” Yarborough said.
The lead lasted just 5 minutes; 7 minutes after that Booneville was ahead, and it just got worse for the Blue Waves from there.
“They were more physical than teams we have played so far, but we just look for consistency with refs,” Yarborough said. “You play the game how it’s called, and our girls are trying to learn how to do that.”
Despite the score, Yarborough saw some strong showings from his players.
“We had a real solid performance from Ann Grace Donohue, our sweeper,” he said. “Elena Eaton really did a nice job pressuring the ball, gaining possession and making that pass. We weren’t always connecting on the other end, but we’ll work on that.”
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