Heritage Academy’s boys soccer program moved on to the second round of the MAIS North 4A Regional Tournament Monday with a 3-0 victory over visiting Bayou Academy.
The game stayed scoreless until the second half where Gus King, Smith Graham and Jackson Robertson each found the back of the net for the Patriots. Sam Starks, Arthur Dawson and Alex Luccasen supplied the assists to move Heritage to 11-4 overall on the season and into the semifinals.
“It was a really good game. (The) boys played really well,” head coach Will Pearson said. “We’ve seen (Bayou) twice already this season and so it’s one of those (things) where it’s hard to beat a team three times, but our boys are really starting to click right now. They’ve put in a lot of good work and preparations for these games and so we saw a lot of it fall in. Bayou did really well, kind of changing some things up on us from what we’ve seen previously, but our boys were able to identify those changes and make some changes to themselves and it showed later in the game when we were finally able to get one in and soon after the second and third. It was a good physical game all the way around.”
The victory paved the way for the No. 2-seeded Patriots to play at No. 1 seed Jackson Academy tomorrow for a berth to the regional championship game. On the other side of the bracket, Hartfield Academy, which defeated Magnolia Heights 9-0 on Monday in the first round, will play host to Lamar School, which beat Madison St. Joe 4-2.
The top two finishes in the tournament punch a ticket to play for a Division I state championship while the teams with the third and fourth-best placements head to the Division II state tournament. The teams with the fifth and sixth-place finishes will play in the Division III state tournament. All of the state tournament games begin on Feb. 12 and end on Feb. 16 with the state championship games, which are being held at Madison-Ridgeland Academy.
Pearson said his Patriots are looking to take down whichever team stands in front of them en route to avenging last year’s loss in the state championship game. It doesn’t matter which division they end up falling in.
“We don’t play down, we play to beat the best,” he said. “I told them when we got into this, ‘Every day you have to win. You have to give your best game against each person. We have to stack our best games and go at it and win. If you stack enough wins, we come out with a championship.’ Last year we went to the championship and fell a little short, so the boys are hungry for it. We want a championship, so we preached that this year, ‘Finish the rep, win the rep, win the practice, win the game.’”
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