LIMA — Lima Senior was riding a high after collecting its first win of the season over Northmont on Tuesday, but Jonathan Alder brought the Spartans back to earth a little with a 18-1 win Friday.
Lima Senior falls to 1-2 and Alder improves to 3-0.
Lima Senior head coach Nathan Garlock knew this was going to be a tough outing against his inexperienced squad, and the Pioneers proved him right as they showed why they are one of the better programs in the area.
“Resiliency,” Garlock said. “We have to work on when that rock is going down the hill how we are going to get together. One person is not going to stop the boulder. It is going to take all of us to get in front of it, stop it and push it back up. That is what we really have to focus on.
“We really have to work on our defense. We are really young and had to make some changes to try and get our offense going, and we’ve had to slide some guys down in our defense and put guys in positions they haven’t played before. We are young still and so right now it is about getting those reps and getting that experience. Games like this hurt but I hope we take a lot away from it.”
Garlock added that the team has four days of practice, the team’s longest break of the year, to reinforce and refine some parts of its game and then return to action Friday against Oregon Clay.
It took 30 seconds to put the ball in the net and from there the Pioneers were off and scoring. In the first 12 minutes, behind some precision passing and patient offense, Alder reeled off seven more goals to go up 8-0.
More of the same came from the Pioneers in the second quarter after scoring four more goals to go up 12-0. Lima Senior finally got on the board when Davion Browning recorded a score with 1:58 left before halftime. The Pioneers added a score seven seconds later, and it would be a running clock going into the second half.
Despite the lopsided score, Garlock said his team came out and continued to battle in the second half.
In the second half, the Pioneers had five more scores.
If not for the late efforts of Spartan goalie Braylin Upshaw it could have been worse.
“It is a tough one anytime you get a running clock on you,” Garlock said. “Our goal is to get better despite what the score is or how the game goes. You always want to work on something particularly in the second half. Don’t worry about what the scoreboard says, focus on this quarter and work on these things and these are the mistakes we are making and let’s try to clean these things up.
“I thought we had a lot better energy in the second half and guys were staying positive. They continued to work and kept cheering each other on. We really didn’t focus on what was happening on the scoreboard, We worked on things that we know we are going to need moving forward to get better.”
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