Niles boys open with loss to West Branch
Trending
NILES -- West Branch coach Matthew Thomas admits that for his boys soccer team it was a little bit of an adjustment playing on the turf at Bo Rein Stadium.
It also was an adjustment for sophomore David Sutton.
He saw the Niles goalkeeper couldn't corral the ball with 27:44 remaining in the first half and saw an opening, sending a shot to the back of the net for a quick Warriors lead.
Sutton followed with another shot to the right side of the net with 14:05 left before halftime.
A teammate asked Sutton, "Can I get a hat trick?"
"I'm all right with that if we can keep scoring," said Thomas, whose team won 5-2 Friday on the opening day of high school soccer in Ohio. "That's what we were doing."
Avery Francis and Dalton Mincks each had goals, but Sutton had one more for the hat trick with 6:19 left. Sutton went to the left side and hit the top corner.
"He's quick and he gets to the right spot," Thomas said. "Today he finished and it was awesome. He needed a game like this."
Niles scored its only two goals on penalty kicks from Kevin Swegan. The second one was with 13:28 remaining. The first one was in the first half.
Red Dragons coach Greg Miller liked what he saw from his team after that second-half penalty kick.
"It helped the momentum for us. We weren't falling back on our heels for us," he said.
Prior to Swegan's second penalty kick, West Branch controlled the momentum.
"They put a higher pressure on the ball, more than we did today. They're a good, young team," Miller said.
Niles is a young team as well with 12 freshmen and eight sophomores. There will be growing pains for the Red Dragons early on.
"Hopefully we grow the first two games real quick and get moving on from there," Miller said.
Friday, it was a quick adjustment for the Warriors, whose home pitch is grass, not turf.
"On the turf, it took us a little while to catch up to the speed," Thomas said. "Once we caught up to it, we saw it was starting to roll a lot better for us. We got some good combination play."