The Daviess County Panthers will find themselves in familiar territory at this year’s 9th District boys’ soccer tournament as DC will be the top seed once again.
The Panthers earned the accolade after a 5-0 win over Owensboro Catholic Saturday at OCHS where DC also snapped the Aces’ five-game winning streak in the process.
DC coach Doug Sandifer said winning the district is always key as the Panthers dominated it yet again after outscoring opponents 10-1 in their district contests thus far.
“It’s our goal,” he said. “We have a handful every year … To earn the one seed and put ourselves in the best position district wise. We’re fortunate enough to do that several years in a row now. It’s going to be interesting how it plays out with the other teams. All we do is try to control our fate and put ourselves in the best seat.”
Hunter Clark has been the offensive leader for the Panthers this season and he continued that with a couple of early goals to go up 2-0 in the first few minutes of Saturday’s contest.
“The last couple of games we started slow and kind of got into the game late and came out with wins,” Sandifer said. “We got lucky on the first goal. I think we screened the keeper running in front of them and it squirted in and got an early goal then another one and maybe that settles us down and gets us comfortable.”
The Panthers added another goal in the half to go up 3-0 at the break when Carson Thomas found the back of the net.
Tanner Anderson scored to make it 4-0 then Clark rounded out his hat trick to finished the scoring and give his team a 5-0 lead.
Sandifer said Clark has been aggressive on offense this season but he wants that to occur in other areas of his game as well.
“When he does that, he’s a different player,” he said. “That’s what his mindset has to be.”
Catholic freshman Brody Martin came into the match with 12 goals in his last four games but Sandifer said they didn’t make it a point to key in on the young striker.
“We rarely mark anybody,” he said. “I think marking people disrupts your team and pulls an important player out of the puzzle we’re trying to put together. We make ourselves aware and make the teams aware of dangerous people on other teams but I probably haven’t marked anybody in 15-20 years.”
Daviess County plays Tuesday at home against South Warren while Catholic is off until Thursday when it hosts University Heights Academy.
Daviess County 5, Owensboro Catholic 0
DCHS (7-2) 3 2–5
OCHS (6-2) 0 0–0
DCHS: Hunter Clark (3 goals), Carson Thomas (goal), Tanner Anderson (goal), Sean Higgs (assist), Carter Hoagland (assist), Nate Daily (assist)
