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It ended in a thud, but season was no dud!

10/31/2014

By Dan Manley
Advocate Sports Editor
The Montgomery County boys’ soccer team saw one of the most successful seasons in school history come to an end Saturday afternoon in Covington as the Indians lost to the Scott High Eagles in the 10th Region championship match.

And it was anything but a happy ending.
Montgomery County gave up a score in the first half on an own goal and trailed 1-0 at the half.

Then in the second half, hit with an amazing 35 penalties, 11 yellow cards and one red card, the Tribe ended up on the short end of a 5-0 score at the hands of one of the state’s top teams.

“We made some uncharacteristic mistakes,” said Coach Nick Pannell. “Things you can’t do and expect to beat a good team.”
Pannell shyed away from blaming the officials for the lopsided loss but it was evident in the final numbers, the kind of marks the Tribe hasn’t seen all season, that things certainly didn’t go their way in that area.
“They have some really outstanding players on offense,” Pannell said. “Do I think they protected those guys more than usual? Probably.”
Montgomery County junior defender Corey Carpenter had never received a yellow card before, but he got one Saturday.

“Apparently someone in the crowd said something and the referee thought is was Corey,” Pannell said. “The line judge told him that it was someone in the crowd, but he wouldn’t change the call and Corey ended up with a yellow card. That’s just the kind of day it turned out to be.”
The yellow card is a warning while a red card is an ejection from the game.

The Indians were left to play one man short after a red card was issued by the official against Nolan Moser.
The Indians had some chances early in the second half trailing just 1-0, but once the Eagles got another goal things went downhill and Scott High finished with a pair of goals late in the match to make the final score 5-0.

Montgomery County went into the match having yielded no more than two goals in any one match through the first 23 matches of the campaign, so the five goals by Scott was a surprise.
The Indians finished the year with a 20-3-1 record, a school record 104 goals while they allowed just 25 on the season with one-fifth of those being scored by Scott High.

Scott High advanced on to the round of 16 this week with a record of 18-2-1.

The Indians suffered their first shutout of the season.
“Our defense has really been outstanding and you hate to have the season end on that kind of a note,” Pannell said. “I think they were just calling a lot of things that we weren’t used to and when that started happening we backed off and that gave Scott a real advantage.
“Then late in the game we got more aggressive but it was out of frustration more than anything else.”

Pannell expressed a lot of pride in his team for the way they had handled the year.

“This is a tough region and we got past a really good team in Bishop Brossart to get into the finals,” he said.

The Indians defeated the Mustangs 1-0 on penalty kicks in the semifinal round, concluding the Mustangs’ year at 15-6-1. Bishop Brossart handed Scott High one of their two losses on the season.
“We’ll just get back to work during the off-season and try to be right back here with another shot next year,” Pannell said.

Although the Indians lose some outstanding players to graduation they’ll have a strong nucleus coming back and they’ll return a balanced lineup with some strong offensive and defensive players coming back.
The Indians lose Nolan Moser and Marco Ortega from their front line and those are two of their top scorers on the season. Among some of the others who’ll be missing next year is goalkeeper Hunter Cole, who recorded nine shutouts.