By David Rogers. BOONE, N.C. — In one respect, it was like watching the Watauga men’s varsity soccer team play itself, only the real Pioneers didn’t quite make it to the field. With sharp ball-handling and putting numbers in the Pioneer half of the field throughout the match, West Forsyth cruised to a 4-0, non-conference win.
“It is hard to explain,” said Pioneer head coach Josh Honeycutt after the match, “but we did not play our brand of Watauga soccer. Most importantly, we didn’t play with passion.”
Now 2-0-1 in non-conference play, West Forsyth played like Watauga normally plays with short, crisp passes, keeping the ball on the ground, with one and two-touch deliveries to teammates as they worked the ball downfield.
West Forsyth head coach Jeffrey Williams was expecting a hard challenge from the Pioneers.
“Watauga is always well coached and plays hard,” said Williams after the match. “We knew we were in for a battle tonight and luckily we came out on the winning side of that. We were able to get numbers in our attack and we counterattacked very quickly. To a degree, we were able to overwhelm them in the final third with our numbers and then we got some quality finishes.”
Honeycutt was very complimentary of what the Titans brought for the contest.
“West Forsyth is a good team,” said Honeycutt. “I am not going to take anything away from them because they are a solid team. They possess the ball well, move it quickly and they have a dangerous attack. If you walked down to my office right now you would see a list of those things on the board, describing them. We got exactly what I told our boys we would be getting. We just weren’t our best tonight, for whatever reason. We didn’t play with a lot of passion. So that was a little bit disappointing.”
Watauga will try to regroup and recover on Aug. 24, at home against Forbush.
BONUS PHOTOS
