Apollo drew first blood early in the match, but Daviess County quickly responded and used a pair of scoring flurries to pull away for a 5-1 victory at home Tuesday to stay atop the 9th District boys’ soccer standings.
“That’s always important, especially in a year like this,” DC head coach Doug Sandifer said of grabbing a district win. “The more important thing is I want us to keep getting better each game. I thought we played well in spurts in this game, then we kind of hit a lull there in the first half.”
(View more photos of the game here.)
The Eagles didn’t make things easy, using an aggressive attack early to notch the first goal.
They won the ball in the middle, and Eh Wah sent a pass up the right side to Harrison Bowman. After getting past the defender, Bowman buried a right-to-left shot less than 5 minutes into the contest.
Less than a minute later, DC got a bit of fortune when Declan Armistead sent a cross through the box. The ball hit the left post and bounced in for the equalizer.
About 13 minutes in, Armistead fed a pass to Hunter Clark, who drove home the go-ahead goal. Three minutes later, a corner kick led to Declan Sandifer scoring with an assist from Sean Higgs.
Apollo head coach Ryan Poirier said a lack of depth hurt the Eagles’ ability to keep up the pressure.
“I thought we played really well to start and really well at the start of the second half,” he said. “Once we got a little tired, we didn’t mark as well. We’re lacking some numbers right now, guys that would typically start. If they would have been available, that would have helped our depth. We’ve got a young bench that doesn’t have a lot of varsity experience.”
Apollo nearly scored in the opening minutes of the second half when Hunter Collins got inside the box, but his shot smashed the left post and bounced away.
Sandifer said after making some personnel adjustments in the second half, his team was able to put the game away.
“I put some other guys in and they brought the energy we were looking for and it kind of sealed the game for us,” he said. “If anything, that shows we have a lot of depth right now that we can interchange people and bring some different things off the bench that can help us. That was encouraging.”
Higgs and Tanner Anderson scored back-to-back goals in less than a minute to go up 5-1 midway through the second frame. Anderson and Nick Vincent had the respective assists.
“I like it,” Sandifer said of five players scoring. “It means more people are getting involved. All these guys are capable of scoring goals, it’s putting themselves in positions to do it. Sometimes they’re hesitant or they’re not being aggressive and missing opportunities. I feel like we did that tonight, just the right guy not calling for it or demanding the ball. Those little things maybe cost us a few chances.”
Poirier was still happy with the grit his team showed.
“It could have gotten uglier,” he said. “I’m glad that they fought. They definitely showed they were ready to play and capable of competing. Unfortunately it didn’t roll our way tonight.”
Poirier said despite dropping their last two matches, they’ve shown improvement.
“Every game we’ve gotten a little bit better at looking for some certain runs and for finding the ball all over the field,” he said. “I think the ball movement has been better the last two games, but we’ve lost the last two games. Sometimes that happens. Sometimes you play better, but you’re playing a better opponent. Even though we lost both of them, I really couldn’t fault the way the were playing.”
The Panthers move to 4-1 (2-0 district) and will play at 7:30 tonight at Evansville Memorial. The Eagles drop to 2-2 (1-1- district) and play their home opener Saturday at 11 a.m. against Meade County.
