Lima Senior’s Brayden Morgan works around Holy Name’s Kesean Garner during Friday night’s match at Spartan Stadium. See more high school sports photos at LimaScores.com.
Richard Parrish | The Lima News
Lima Senior continues to endure growing pains.
After dropping its opener 13-1 Tuesday against Oregon Clay, Parma Heights Holy Name blanked the Spartans, 15-0, on a chilly Friday night.
With the loss, Lima Senior falls to 0-2 and Holy Name improves to 3-0.
Even though the the score was one-sided, Lima Senior head coach Nathan Garlock continues to see improvements.
“We took a big step up in competition,” Garlock said. “We knew that when we accepted this game. Holy Name is one of those traditional powers on the east side of the state because a lot of teams are not trying to schedule them because they are the No. 1 team in their region. They are a really good team. We knew this was going to be a challenge but it is a measuring stick for us.”
Holy Name, which made a two and a half hour trek to play Lima Senior, came into the game and immediately flexed their Green Wave muscles by scoring within the first 30 seconds of the game. By the time the buzzer sounded ending the first quarter, Holy Name led 6-0.
Six more scores followed in the second stanza for Holy Name as it owned a 12-0 lead at halftime and enacting a running clock in the second half.
Even though the lopsided affair looks worse than the opener, Garlock sees it differently.
“The score was a little worse than our last game but when you look at it from a different angle, and especially the level of competition we stepped up to, there was a ton of improvement out here and that is what we are looking for and that is what we are talking about and I was telling them we took a giant step up in competition but we held them to three goals in the second half after giving up 12 in the first. We made a lot of strides and looked a lot different than we did a couple of nights ago.”
Holy Name’s Andrew Mueller and Phoenix Hegyi each tallied four goals and AJ Leopold added two scores.
Despite the two blowouts to open the year, Garlock remains optimistic this team has the players, pieces and personnel to be competitive and start picking up wins. As pointed out, prior to the season, the Spartans come in inexperienced yet enthusiastic.
“We knew that we were going to have some growing pains with everything we had to replace,” Garlock said. “We had a different starting lineup already. We are trying some guys in different spots. We are trying some things to get things going. Right now we think we have some things going on defense that should help moving forward even though the score doesn’t always reflect that.
“We knew what we are looking at compared to what we had a few nights ago. We know there is improvement there and now we have to get that offense going. We have the athletes to do it and that is one of things we hang our hats on is athleticism. We know we are not always going to go out there and out-technique teams but we know we have the athletes to play with a lot of teams on our schedule and that is what we are going to fall back on.”
