Chargers take weather-shortened win on soccer pitch

By Allen Etzler
Published in Sports on September 3, 2014 1:50 PM

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aetzler@newsargus.com

When the Wayne Country Day soccer team jogged to the sidelines they gathered and took a few swigs of "Michael's secret stuff" from the movie Space Jam.

Or you could call it water.

Either way, it worked for the Chargers.

Just seconds after the water break midway through the first half, Wayne Country Day scored on a corner kick for the lone goal in a weather-shortened, 1-0 win over Wayne Christian on Tuesday evening.

Jacob Magera scored the goal and Tony Townsend got the assist.

"Pretty dominating effort," Wayne Country Day head coach Steven Ellis said. "Possessed the ball on our half for the entire game basically. Our goalie didn't touch the ball. We didn't have as much to show for it as we would have liked."

Ellis had his players take shooting practice all day Monday to help the team try and fix its scoring woes.

But, despite the dominating effort from the Chargers, they didn't quite get the goals to show for it. They had 12 shots on goal, and had quite a few more go wide of the net.

Wayne Christian goalie Chandler King had 11 saves.

"I think the guys were just a little anxious," Ellis said. "Sometimes they wouldn't settle themselves before a shot, other times we tried to take one or two extra touches."

Led by Noah Adkins and Magera, the Chargers dominated the play in the midfield. Adkins, who Ellis nicknamed "Bricks" because he runs like he has bricks in his pockets, played one of his best games as a midfielder. The sophomore was all over the field and constantly pushed the Chargers' attack forward.

However, Adkins and the rest of the midfielders often tried to get to passive on the attack, and decided against taking shots in time before the Eagles dropped nine players in to the box and clogged it up too much for the Chargers to score.

"Once they got all their guys back there it made it tough to get shots on," Ellis said. "We had chances before they all got back in the box but we didn't take always take them."

The Eagles failed to generate any real scoring opportunities. Wayne Country Day goalie Patrick Hall only touched the ball twice all game on through balls that were kicked too hard.

Two Wayne Christian shots went wide of the goal.

The Chargers (5-2-1 overall) travel to Oakwood today, while the Eagles (0-4-0) face Cape Fear Christian next Tuesday.