By DOUG EADS, CJ Correspondent
Commonwealth Journal
Somerset —
Thanks to an early-season district loss to Monticello in the first week of the season, the Somerset Briar Jumper soccer team could ill afford an 0-2 start against league foes.
However, headed into their cross-town clash at arch-rival Pulaski County on Thursday night, that was the scenario staring Brian Blankenship and crew squarely in the face.
And, to their credit, the Briar Jumpers played like this one was a must win indeed.
Dakota Brown’s goal midway through the opening half of play gave Somerset a 1-0 lead at the intermission, and thanks to two goals in less than a minute early in the second half, it was the Briar Jumpers avoiding that 0-2 district start with a 3-1 victory over the home-standing Maroons.
“This may sound so weird this early in the season, but this really was a must win for us,” stated Blankenship, after his club moved to 1-1 in district play and to 5-3 overall on the season.
“We knew coming in that PC was really organized this year, and everybody is always looking at each other’s scores,” continued the SHS coach. “We knew this was going to be a fun match, and we needed to win this one maybe even more than PC did.”
The Maroons could get little going offensively for the most part in this match, due to the fact that Somerset’s game plan coming in was to take away PC’s leading scorer, Zach Taylor.
The Maroons senior captain and team leader did manage a score late in the game with just over four minutes remaining, trimming the SHS lead to 3-1, but for the most part, Taylor found himself double and triple teamed all night long.
“It goes to show you that if you don’t watch him — on the back side we had three guys running after him and he still stuck one in on the side net,” stated coach Blankenship.
“We knew that Zach can single handily win games on free kicks, or if he has any free space out there,” added the SHS coach. “The quality level of their players is rising, and last year when we started scoring on them their kids were dropping their heads. Tonight, you didn’t see that at all.”
Meanwhile, Blankenship’s counterpart in this one, first year PC head coach Casey Inabnitt, liked the effort his kids gave him, but in the end, Somerset proved to be just a little too much on this night.
“The kids did work very hard and really, we executed the game plan for 75 to 80 percent of the game,” pointed out the Maroon coach.
“Somerset punished our mistakes, and unfortunately, we didn’t do that on their end, and the score turns out to be 3-1,” Inabnitt remarked.
Leading PC 1-0 at the intermission, Somerset extended that advantage to 2-0 with 25:26 remaining in the contest, thanks to a David Weigel goal, and about 45 seconds later, Somerset scored once again on an ‘on goal’ off of Colby Hall’s throw in from the corner.
“The way we were playing was a little more defensive tonight, so that did make it a little harder on Zach (Taylor), because he was alone on top for most of the time this evening,” said Inabnitt.
“Zach’s a very intelligent player, and he had one off the bar and he finished another one, and it could have been a different game had some of those chances went in,” stated the PC coach.
With the loss, Pulaski County fell to 0-1 on the season in district play and to 5-2 overall, and will return to action next Tuesday night on the road at Madison Southern.
Somerset meanwhile will return home to Clara Morrow Field tomorrow morning, as the Jumpers will entertain Oneida Baptist Institute in a varsity only match at 10 a.m.
