The largest crowd of the season filled the seats and occupied the sidelines on the west side of the field on a sunny and blustery night. It was nice to see the support for the team but especially for the six seniors. All of them were introduced with their escorts in front of the grand stand. Each player was presented with a red fleece blanket with the NW Panthers soccer shield. The players' mothers/aunts were presented with a red rose. The 2010 seniors are Cam "Coo" Williams, Tyler "Cramp" Kronk (Captain), Ryan "Smalls" Lincoln (Captain), Jiovanni "Fast and Furious" Adriano, Jason "the Magician" Callejas and Trent "Michelin Man" Jacobs.
FIRST HALF
With the wind blowing at about 20 mph from the north, the coaching staff decided to defend the north goal first and try to get a first half lead and try to defend that lead in the second half.
The Panthers had a shaky start and it looked as if we were playing a third half against Plymouth. In the 9th minute a Bruins attack in the NorthWood box exposed some leaks in the Panther's back line. The ball bounced around and luckily for us, hit the right post and bounced back out.
In the 14th minute NW came up on the right side and had their most dangerous attack of the night. Taylor got a pass on the right flank and passed the ball square to Eddie who in turn, moved the ball to his left to Ryan. Ryan loaded up and took a hard shot that sailed just to the left of the Bethany goal. With the wind in our back, most of the action took place on the Bruins defensive third. A couple of set pieces that missed pace and directions took us to half time.
HALF TIME
The impromptu outdoor locker room was the scene of a short but fiery instruction on where adjustments needed to be made.
SECOND HALF
It was obvious that Bethany players Hollinger-Janzen, Stoltzfus and Sylvester needed marked better. And more so in the second half then the first because we were to play into the wind for 40 minutes. When the Panthers started missing #4 Femi Hollinger-Janzen's mark half way thru the half, Jiovanni was directed to man mark him in the center of the field, at which he did a good job. Most of the play took place in the middle third of the field. The Panthers got a lot of throw in calls from pudgy fudge in the middle -who by the way did a pretty decent job in general- and were able to keep Bethany Christian away from the box for the most part. But thanks to Kyle, who made nice saves in the 67th & 73rd, we were able to prevent them from scoring despite the fact that the defense let the balls bounce thru the box on corners and crosses a little too much. When the final whistle blew, the crowd had witnessed two 0-0 games. The result in itself is good. Bethany came in with a 10-4 record. The Panthers have lost only one game (at Concord) in the last 6 games they have played and with a win against Angola tomorrow (Saturday)would have some nice momentum going into next week's Sectionals.
NOTES
The 0-0 result ties the NorthWood record of 7 shut outs/clean sheets in a season. So Kyle Dijkstra and Mike "Holy" Schmitt both have recorded 7 shut outs in a season. Let's try to get some more!
Thanks to Sherry Beckwith and all the other parents for putting on the Senior Night Dinner at the Elementary School.
The JV will have its last practice of the season this afternoon at the High School. Varsity will practice at the game field the rest of the season.
Tomorrow's game vs. Angola will have a 11 am start for JV and a 1 pm start for Varsity.
Varsity Record: 8-4-2
JV Record: 6-6-2
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