With a share of the Eastern South Dakota Conference crown on the line, the Aberdeen Central boys’ soccer program took all the suspense out of the day early.
The Golden Eagles scored three times in the first 15 minutes of play, led 6-0 at the half and cruised to a 7-0 victory over Yankton Saturday afternoon at the Brownell Activities Complex. The win marked Central’s second straight shutout and fifth of the season.
Sophomore forward Linus Johnson said the team knew what was at stake in terms of conference title hopes when the Golden Eagles took the field.
“We knew it,” he said. “We wanted it. Coach told us two more games and we get something big.”
Central coach Lance Mohr said the ability to realize that goal was a special moment for his squad.
“It’s a goal every year,” he said, “but it always seems like we have this trip-up event, a bad result or whatever it may be. We’ve avoided that big pitfall this year, and you come down to the end and get a big win last Monday against Watertown. It showed today, we were really hungry to get that result. You could tell right away.”
The Golden Eagles certainly didn’t waste any time getting a start on that quest. Central junior Derek Arunasalam scored what proved to be the game-winner just four minutes into the contest off a corner kick opportunity.
The Golden Eagles were off to the races from there. Arunasalam found the goal again, followed by Antonio Buedo Ruiz, Johnson, Tyler Bain and Lincoln Stone in the first half. Johnson scored a second goal midway through the second half during running clock time.
“It was just looking for gates,” Johnson said. “We’ve been working on 1-v-1, so we can take our guy and look for better passes. That really improved my game play.”
Central is now 4-1-2 in its last seven games and 8-2-3 overall heading into Tuesday’s regular-season finale at Mitchell. A win in that contest would give the Golden Eagles the ESD crown outright.
Mohr said the team does not shy away from talking about that possibility.
“We talk about it because we have the good fortune of facing it,” he said. “It’s something that you want to have. You want to have that pressure in games this time of year, so we’re inviting that. Starting next week and the week after, we’re going to have a whole bunch of pressure, so getting our mentality right with that is what we want to keep going forward.”
