By David Rogers. BOONE, N.C. — Scoring was balanced for Watauga men’s soccer junior varsity on Aug. 16, as the Pioneers routed West Caldwell JV at Jack Groce Stadium in “mercy rule” fashion, 9-0. With eight goals in the first half, Watauga added the ninth in the first two minutes after intermission to abbreviate the game.
Watauga JV’s Lucas Straub got a hat trick, scoring three goals, while Quincy Honeycutt sent two into the back of the net, with the others spread among multiple guys.
“It was balanced, to be sure,” said Watauga JV head coach Vern Collins afterwards. “The beauty of this game… It was a shared effort. We had multiple guys score, which is what we like.”
Collins said that in spite of the 9-0 result, there were areas of disappointment.
“I am actually thankful that we didn’t get that ninth goal in the first half,” said Collins, “because it gave us a chance to have an instructive conversation at halftime. These guys always want to win by the mercy rule, beat a team by nine points and end the game early. But in light of that, we don’t want to be a team that just hunts for goal. We want to play Watauga soccer, work the ball around and look for opportunities and play together as a team. In this match, we went away from that as the first half went on, although the goals kept coming. So halftime gave us a chance to get back to creating quality opportunities.”
Watauga soccer has two home matches next on the team schedule, vs. West Forsyth (Clemmons) on Aug. 21 and Forbush (East Bend) on Aug. 24. What follows are four successive road matches at East Lincoln (Denver), R J Reynolds (Winston-Salem), Mt. Tabor (Winston-Salem) and A C Reynolds (Asheville).
After two non-conference home games vs. Lake Norman (Mooresville, Sept. 12) and Cox Mill (Concord, Aug. 14), Watauga opens Northwestern Conference play at home vs. South Caldwell on Sept. 20.
