By David Rogers. BOONE, N.C. — It was a chilly, mid-autumn night at Jack Groce Stadium on Oct. 13. There was no snow, but plenty of “flurries” in the second half of Watauga men’s soccer match against Freedom High School (Morganton) as the Pioneers scored six unanswered goals — most with less than 25 minutes remaining in the game — to win, 6-0.
Once the Patriots’ goalkeeper allowed a Noah Jamison shot to sail over his head into the back of the net a few minutes into the second half, it was game-on for the Pioneers. Keowen Arguello and Curtis Sevensky paced Watauga with a pair of goals each, but it was Jamison and Micah Duvall who started things off with a goal apiece. Three of the Pioneer goals came within five minutes of each other, midway through the half.
Between the two goalkeepers used by the Patriots, the Freedom statistician recorded 13 saves by the visitors’ keepers of shots on goal by the Pioneers.
Among the four assists was a rare one awarded to goalkeeper Kyle Painter to open the night’s scoring. He sent a long pass from inside his own penalty area downfield where it was quickly collected by Jamison and sent to the Freedom-defended net.
Commenting on that particular play, Watauga head coach Josh Honeycutt described the importance of distributing the ball effectively.
“That was huge. When we can rely on our keeper, center backs or outside backs to distribute the ball to get us into dangerous situations, then it gives us an advantage. It means we don’t always have to work the ball up through midfield, although we want to at times. We don’t always want to be a long ball team, but that was a great counterattack moment,” Honeycutt said.
Of the overall tenor of the match, Honeycutt stated what was obvious to the many Pioneer fans in the stands.
“It was a tale of two halves,” added Honeycutt. “In the first half, we weren’t quite crisp and sharp like we have been most of the week. It wasn’t bad soccer, it just wasn’t great soccer… Being the third game of the week, we might have been a little bit tired, so it was a slow start, not clean.”
Honeycutt was quick to point out the difference in second half play, after some minor adjustments.
“In the second half, we came out like gangbusters. Super crisp. Clean ball, making great passes, finding great opportunities and executing to put them away. The second half was a much better, family team effort than the first,” said Honeycutt.
After a rigorous non-conference schedule that saw the Pioneers up against some of North Carolina’s best 4A-level programs, when the results were much tighter and wins much harder to come by, Watauga is harvesting the fruit of that intentionally tougher scheduling.
“We’ve grown. We’ve come together as a team, realizing that we can play for one another and use each other to get a team win. And now that we are connecting, we are getting dangerous opportunities — and we are finishing. That is a observation because earlier in the year we struggled a bit to find the back of the net,” said Honeycutt.
“Our non-conference schedule was very difficult,” the now veteran coach continued. “We are talking about some of the best teams in the state, so obviously it is unlikely for us to score 6 goals, 8 goals, and such against those kind of teams. That prepared us for conference games.”
During the more competitive non-conference matches, Watauga seemed to control a lot of possession, but had trouble keeping it in the attacking third of the field, much less scoring.
“Yes, we are doing a better job of realizing that we can throw numbers in the box and still be OK, defensively. Early in the season there was a mentality that ‘These teams are good. They can score on us. So we need to be defensive.’ As a consequence, the opportunities that we got were one or two men trying to get take advantage of those opportunities in the attacking third. Now we are realizing that our defense is solid and we can play good team ball. So we can throw numbers in the box. We are going to get opportunities. They are going to be dangerous. We are going to finish them (by scoring goals) — but we are still going to be solid, defensively.”
Now 5-1 in conference play and 7-8 overall, Watauga is tied atop the 3A/4A Northwestern Conference standings with Hibriten, whose only loss came at the feet of the Pioneers. On Monday, Oct. 17, Watauga faces a rematch challenge with Alexander Central (3-2-1 in NWC, 4-6-3 overall), the only conference team to defeat the Pioneers in the 2022 campaign, a 3-0 decision at the Cougars’ campus on Sept. 28. The Pioneers will look to exact a measure of revenge on their Jack Groce home turf.
Watauga will close out the regular season with a pair of away games at Hibriten (Oct. 19, and looming as a potential decider of conference supremacy) and Freedom (Oct. 24) before the regular season finale at home against Ashe County (Oct. 26).
NORTHWESTERN CONFERENCE STANDINGS THRU REPORTED MATCHES, OCT. 13
- Watauga (5-1 NWC, 7-8-1 overall)
- Hibriten (5-1, 13-2-3)
- Alexander Central (3-2-1, 4-6-3)
- South Caldwell (3-3, 9-4-2)
- Ashe County (0-4-2, 8-7-3)
- Freedom (0-5-1, 5-9-2)
SLIDESHOW (All images credited to David Rogers)
