Boys soccer: Indians freeze Tigers, 6-0
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COCOLAMUS — Offensively this season, the Juniata boys soccer team has been on quite a scoring spree in their early undefeated season.
On Tuesday against Juniata County rival, East Juniata, the scoring continued while its offense also pushed the ball on the Tigers side of the field while the Indians took home the road win, 6-0.
"EJ threw a little different look at us than what we were anticipating. That kind of threw us off a little bit, so that’s a compliment to EJ, that they made us have to work a little bit in the first half there," said Juniata coach Jared Byler. "But we did have a little talk, a little chalk talk before the game. There were some adjustments we need to make, going forward to make ourselves a little more dangerous on the offensive end, and credit to these guys. They’re one of the most coachable teams I’ve ever had. They went out and executed everything we asked of them for that 15-minute conversation we had.
Just really proud of the effort they put in tonight."
In the first, the Juniata offense went right to work immediately taking their first possession and went right at Tigers back-third.
Early on, the Tigers defense was able to hold its own as goalie Ian Rickenbaugh played tough, keeping Juniata scoreless for almost the first 10 minutes of the contest.
The Indians threatened early and just missed a goal when the ball hit the horizontal bar, keeping things scoreless at 32 minutes.
Juniata scored their first goal on a Landon Beward header off a corner attempt at 30:15.
Two minutes later, Josue Osorio scored in transition as he caught a pass from Caden Naylor and put it through at 28:16.
East Juniata was able to hold its own as they defended Juniata's charges time-after-time until the final 15 minutes of the first stanzas
But Hudson Soccio plastered the last goal of the half on an unassisted shot at 13:44.
Coming into the second half, the Tigers came out and started to push the ball down on the Juniata end. East Juniata refused to give up as they were able to send four shots at the Juniata goal area.
"We put them under a little more pressure in the second half. I know, I said to those guys, before the game even started, we played a game last night. But so did they," said East Juniata coach Tyler Inch.
“So we can’t really have that excuse. We gotta just show up and play. I think we started slow. The first half, for sure. At halftime, we talked about how we wanted to respond. We’ve been talking about that all year. Like, how do we want to respond to adversity? How do we want to respond to anything? And I think we responded a lot more positively in that second half. So, I was proud of the boys for that, even though it wasn’t a great result or a fun result. "
However, Juniata got back on the board at 29:31 on an Osorio goal with the assist coming from Alex Portzline, making it a 4-0 advantage.
Juniata was at it again later when Jackson Shellenberger broke loose and blasted an unassisted goal at the 21:55 mark.
Alex Armstrong ended the game scoring at 6-0 as he got his name in the scorebook with an unassisted goal at 13:01.
Juniata 6, East Juniata 0
JU 3 3 – 6
EJ 0 0 – 0
Scoring
First half
JU – Landon Beward unassisted, 30:15.
JU – Josue Osorio from Caden Naylor, 28:16.
JU – Hudson Soccio, unassisted, 13:44.
Second half
JU – Osorio from Alex Portzline, 29:31.
JU – Jackson Shellenberger unassisted, 21:55.
JU – Alex Armstrong unassisted, 13:01.
Shots on goal . JU – 26. EJ – 4.
Corners: JU – 14. EJ – 0.
Saves: Nolan Imes (JU) 3, Jonny Hoffman (EJ) 11.