The Aberdeen Central boys had trouble gaining their first-game footing, before the Spearfish Spartans eventually found their own traction Friday night.
Spearfish produced a pair of second-half goals to record a 2-0 non-conference soccer victory at Brownell Activities Complex.
Both teams fought to a scoreless first-half tie, and Central coach Lance Mohr said it took most of the opening half for his team to get settled in.
“The first half was us finding our feet with a new season, a totally new team, and it took us 30 minutes or so to get going and see what we look like, and what it was like to play against another varsity team,” Mohr said.
Mohr was pleased to see the team create chances to score in the first half, despite not putting the ball into the back of the net.
“We had a couple good chances. We had about five or six more that never became chances because we were offside,” Mohr said. “Partly credit to them, partly our bad as well, so that played into that, too.”
In the second half Spearfish took control and eventually opened the scoring in the 60th minute when Trey Ludens scored the first of two goals in seven minutes for the Spartans.
Spearfish added their second goal of the night in the 67th minute when Kellan Scott scored via a penalty kick. Mohr said the combination of Spearfish’s defensive pressure as well as Central miscues led to the pair of Spartan goals.
“It caused us some pressure, but we didn’t do a good enough job of playing around it and making it hurt them,” Mohr said. “Instead, we kind of played into their game and played long. They have a really good backline and that was the result. We gave up a couple of tough goals.”
From there, Spearfish relied on playing keep away and earned the win over the fifth-rated Golden Eagles.
Mohr said there were several takeaways from the first game.
“I thought we had periods of good play and then we had periods where we just didn’t really find any rhythm at all,” Mohr said. “(We) kind of let them dictate what we were going to do, what our opportunities were, what our options were. Some of that kind of lingered, kind of built in and made it a really challenging game for us. We know what we need to work on now, that’s for sure.”
Mohr believes the team needs more experience on the field, and next Tuesday’s matchup at Sioux Falls Jefferson will be a good learning opportunity for his team.
“We don’t have a lot of time to train, and that’s OK,” Mohr said. “I’d rather, to be honest, have us get out there and just play it again. Just run through it again, see what it looks like, see what we can learn, and kind of start to put some pieces together and go from there.”
Spearfish 0 2 – 2
Aberdeen Central 0 0 – 0
First Half
No scoring.
Second Half
1, S, Trey Ludens, 60th minute; 2, S, Kellan Scott, 67th minute.
