West Carteret ousts E. Wayne from 3A soccer playoffs

By Allen Etzler
Published in Sports on October 29, 2014 1:48 PM

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aetzler@newsargus.com

When Eastern Wayne head coach Jorg Wagner made the switch midway through the season to give Ryan Fleming full-time duty in goal, he anticipated the keeper making some positioning mistakes.

Fleming had never played in goal before and was learning a completely new position.

However, Wagner wasn't anticipating a couple of new soccer balls to cause Fleming to be out of position and give up an own goal in the team's first N.C. High School Athletic Association 3-A playoff game since 2010.

"We broke out these new balls and they're extra grippy," Wagner said.

The extra grip allowed West Carteret's Austin Fountain to throw the ball nearly 40 yards and when Fleming came off his line to catch the ball where it would have landed, it sailed just over his head, hitting off his hand and into the net for the Patriots'' first goal in a 3-1 win on Tuesday night.

"We had plenty of chances to get back in the game," Wagner said. "We've never put blame on (Fleming being out of position) and we're not going to start now. We had plenty of opportunities and we were only able to put one in. It was a little unfortunate."

Fleming made six saves and Eastern Wayne outshot West Carteret 19-9.

Sam Biggs scored in 34th minute off a rebound that Henry Nelson put on frame. But after Biggs' goal, the Warriors couldn't get another shot past West Carteret goalie Bryan Rios-Carillo. Rios-Carillo made 14 stops including a penalty kick on Ethan Zadrozny's attempt in the third minute. Zadrozny had the chance to put away the rebound, but shanked the shot wide.

In the second half, the Warriors returned the favor, giving the Patriots a penalty in the 55th minute. The Patriots capitalized when Joe Corbett drilled a rocket shot into the top right corner.

Fountain scored the third goal on a cross from Robert Herbst in the 61st minute to complete the scoring. From there, the Warriors fell apart offensively trying to press too hard to get back in the game.

"I felt like to that point, the third goal, we had outplayed them and really did a good job creating chances," said Wagner, whose team finished 9-9 overall this season and will graduate 12 seniors.

"After that goal we had a few guys trying to do too much and our cohesiveness that we had earlier fell apart."