WEST POINT — When Columbus senior Aniyah Sanders stepped up to the penalty spot in the second half of Tuesday’s girls varsity match against West Point, it was an unfamiliar position for her.
Sanders had never scored in her high school career, but after Columbus drew a penalty, this was the perfect opportunity to finally get her on the scoresheet.
Waiting for the signal from the referee, Sanders lined herself up, and once the whistle sounded, she sent a perfectly placed ball into the right side of the net for her first goal as a Falcon.
“It was nerve-racking,” Sanders said. “I was thinking, if I miss this, my teammates are going to be mad at me, but I scored it. It was a great feeling.”
With much jubilation coming from Sanders’ teammates and from the sideline, Columbus scored twice more in the second half to enact a mercy-rule victory.
Then the boys team got in on the fun.
In a feat seldom seen for the program, both teams dominated the Green Wave with 8-1 and 7-0 victories, respectively.
In the girls match, Sanders was one of three Falcons (5-5) to score a brace on the night, as Kylee Akujobi and Johnasia O’Neal also scored twice, both coming in the first half.
After scoring to open up the game, West Point (0-2), who just recently found enough players to even field a varsity team, equalized off the foot of Mollie Brown.
However, from that point forward, it was all Columbus, and it came quickly. Tuesday’s matches, due to poor field conditions from the day’s rainy weather, were shortened to 30-minute halves.
In the final 20 minutes of that shortened first half, Columbus scored four times to take a 5-1 lead into the break.
“The whole time with the goalie, we just made sure that we kept pressing the ball,” Columbus head coach Joseph Richardson said. “Overall, I thought we played well. Our defense played well. I was proud of us as a whole collective unit tonight.”
Constant pressure on the goal proved to be the difference, and for a young, inexperienced team like West Point, in some tough conditions, the Green Wave just couldn’t keep up.
The early goal was an encouraging point moving forward, but the scoreline of Tuesday night’s match was very much indicative of the play on the field as Columbus was the better team.
“We had nine players or so to start the year with, so we’re slowly building our team and finding girls,” West Point girls coach Courtney Hatcher said. “We’re trying to build together and work through mistakes to be a higher-scoring team.”
Columbus boys 7, West Point 0
Like the opening match of the night, the Columbus boys dominated, and it was the Destin Poindexter show for the Falcons.
The sophomore, who has been bagging goals for years now for Columbus (2-8), did that and then some Tuesday, scoring four times, including a hat trick in the first half alone.
He was getting through balls from teammates on counter-attack opportunities and making the most of them in one-on-one situations against an inexperienced West Point keeper.
“We were getting wide, so I was always staying closer to the defender and just making a run for it,” Poindexter said. “We used our speed and we realized that we were faster than them, so we made sure to stay onside and execute.”
Success is meant to be replicated, and as the old saying goes, ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.’ Tuesday was a bit of an exaggerated example of that, but continuing to put pressure on West Point’s back line caused mistakes and easy scoring chances for the Falcons.
After being up 5-0 at half, Richardson could sense the hunger in the team to end things early. Columbus accomplished the feat within the first 10 minutes of the second half, scoring twice to reach that magic mercy-rule number.
“Wins have been few and far between for us this year, so that grind, that desire to get a win, that carried us,” Richardson said. “I’ve been here for eight years, and we’ve never mercy-ruled anybody over the past three years. When they saw 5-0 at half, it was, ‘We’ve never done this before. We want to do it.’”
As for West Point, the main area of improvement is communication, something the Green Wave (0-2) have undoubtedly struggled with this season.
The season is still very much young for West Point, so addressing and tackling these problems early on will only help down the road.
“We’re thin, we were winded and we didn’t communicate well,” West Point boys coach Tyler Vick said. “We just need to work on our communication. That’s the biggest thing.”
West Point will have chances to work on that next Monday evening on the road against Kemper County, while Columbus looks to ride this positive momentum into its next matches on Friday night at Grenada.
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Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 37 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
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