Maintaining focus has been a problem for the Berkshire boys soccer team this season. In adjusting to classes in a new campus building, one problem has been waiting to play on the turf at Great Lakes Cheese Stadium; kinks are slowly and gradually being ironed out.
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Maintaining focus has been a problem for the Berkshire boys soccer team this season. In adjusting to classes in a new campus building, one problem has been waiting to play on the turf at Great Lakes Cheese Stadium; kinks are slowly and gradually being ironed out.
The Badgers have been fortunate, though, to have neighboring school districts sharing facilities. The afternoon of Sept. 18 at Lion Stadium on the campus of Notre Dame-Cathedral Latin High School, the Badgers hosted a small Conneaut Spartan team dealing with a sudden decision during the summer that abruptly ended their league affiliation in District 10 of Pennsylvania.
The Badgers had an edge in skill sets, and that became clear midway through the first half as Berkshire took a 5-0 victory on the strength of a four-goal first half from junior forward Jack Jacobs.
The teams spent more than 13 minutes just setting up their attacks, but with 13:30 gone, Joey Czekaj sent a pass across the goal mouth and Jacobs pushed it home for the first goal of the game.
Senior Apollo Percic then sent a high pass across the goal mouth from the left side, which Jacobs headed into the nets with 19:43 gone. That duo repeated the play again at 24:50, and again at 27:04 in the first half, to effectively give the Spartans their final whack on the snoot.
Conneaut made some adjustments to stop those crossing passes in the second half, but with 10:31 gone, Jacobs found Percic with a perfect pass that found the back of the net for the final score of the game.
“I kind of felt we would have an edge on them before the game even started,” said Berkshire Assistant Coach Josh Parr, who was filling in for Head Coach Nick Fejedelem. “I could see we would have a big edge in numbers, and I didn’t have to tell the kids to apply pressure right away. We got good positioning, the normal bounces went our way, and our defense was really rock solid.”
Berkshire outshot the Spartans (1-7) by a 35-6 count in the game. Conneaut did a nice job in the second half of taking away those goal-mouth passes for headers, but the damage had been done.
Averaging three goals a game so far in this young season of anxiety and promise, Jacobs was glad for his efforts, but praised the defensive efforts more in the victory.
“Our defense has been really strong so far,” he said of his team, now 6-1 on the season. Next season, the teams will match up in the CVC, finally, so this was a good learning experience for the young Spartans, who dressed only 13 players.
Jacobs still has his focus for that first home match in the new Badger digs.
“It’s been tough not getting to play in the new stadium, but we are getting hyped up a lot to be ready, and that has lifted us when we play here, too,,” Jacobs said. “This is like a second home, so we want to play well on this beautiful turf. We will be ready for that first game at home.”
The first half burst from Jacobs included a trio of assists from Percic and the first from Czekaj, and Jacobs assisted on the goal from Percic in the second half to cap the day.
Berkshire freshman Roman Percic had a couple tough saves to keep the Spartans off the scoreboard, and sophomore Jake Starr kept the zero on the board in the second half to push the Badgers further down the road of anticipation to that first match on their new turf.
Somebody better be really ready to play for a full 80 minutes, because the Badgers will be as ready as a team can be for that first game.
