By TIM TAYLORValley Sports Report
WAVERLY — The Waverly and Tioga boys soccer teams battle through a tight first half before the Wolverines erupted for a half-dozen goals in the second half to end the season with a 7-0 shutout here Wednesday.
With the postseason here and neither team qualifying, it gave the coaches, a pair of former Tioga teammates, an opportunity to bring their squads together for one last match for both.
“It just means another moment to grow, another moment to be together and to be present with another team that is in a similar situation as us,” Waverly coach John Rankin said. “We're very young, we more or less struggle to get some numbers, and we like to do a lot of partner work with Tioga.
“Their coach is a former teammate of mine, even though he was a few classes above me. I grew up watching him play, I grew up playing alongside him for a year, so it's nice to reconnect with your teammates, reconnect with another coach who absolutely loves the game, and try to get all these guys to improve their play one game, one practice at a time.”
“We brought a couple freshmen up from the modified team, just get their feet kind of wet on what varsity soccer is about, higher speed, a sped-up game,” said Tioga coach Donald Van Dusen. “We're glad that we could get that under our belts.
“We lost a couple of kids to wrestling starting, so that kind of obviously put us in a predicament, but it's always great, coming up here and playing with Johnny. I've known Johnny, he played for Tioga too, so we always try to get these couple of games in, and it's good that the boys could just come up and play and get something under their belts.”
The Tigers held their host at bay for half of the first period until Collin Kraft broke the scoreless deadlock with a goal at 19:21.
The match would remain 1-0 until Hayden Roskow made it 2-0 just 42 seconds into the second half with the first of his two goals on the night.
The Wolverines’ Ian Johnston pushed the lead to 3-0 at 33:20, then Roskow sent a crossing shot into the upper net for his second goal at 28:14.
Hayden Terwilliger scored with the clock at 15 minutes to push the advantage to 5-0.
Jayden Washington converted a penalty kick at 6:46 and Seamus Keely ricocheted a shot off the left post and into the back of the net for the final tally of the evening.
“First half was a little too close for comfort,” said Rankin. “I told the boys at practice yesterday, I was like, guys, listen, your teammates who have sat the bench, who have gotten not as much minutes as they probably could have, this is a chance for you guys to return the favor because they've supported you all season. They've sat, they've dressed, they've warmed up, they've done everything they can to support you and be successful. It's your turn to do the same thing.
“We went in a little big-headed in the first half, in my opinion. So the halftime talk was, we’ve got to get it together. This is not us. We need to clean up the touches. We need to play our version of soccer, not just boot the ball and hope to God we score, because it was a lot of selfishness of, I want to be the one to score, I want to be the one to do this, I want to be the one to do that. As soon as we leave the selfishness outside of the field, we start putting goals up and we get kids who don't normally score, don't normally get assists, get those opportunities. It was pretty awesome to see towards the end there.”
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IN PHOTO 1: Waverly’s Trent VanDyke. IN TOP PHOTO: Tioga’s Jace Schanbacher (7) squares off with a handful of Waverly foes, including Collin Wheeler (15). … PHOTOS BY TIM TAYLOR.
