AFTON — It was a tale of two halves in Chuckey-Doak’s home match against Morristown East on Tuesday. By the end of the first half, the Black Knights held a 3-1 lead, but the Hurricanes scored two unanswered goals in the second and the match ended in a 3-3 tie.
Chuckey-Doak’s offense came out with some fire, scoring all three of their goals within a minute of each other.
Johnathan Brenes scored the game’s first goal after 12 minutes, with the assist from Pablo Dimas. One minute later, Sean Humbert got ahold of the ball and passed it to Tammo Haase, who booted it past the Hurricanes’ keeper to put the Knights up 2-0. Humbert got his own goal less than 60 seconds later, when Marco Rojas shot him the ball and he found open net in front of him for the team’s third goal.
“It was good,” Chuckey-Doak coach Cory Braithwaite said of his team’s quick work, offensively. “We have been practicing the high press a lot. I can’t remember if it was the second or the third (goal), they had a throw in and we’ve been saying, ‘Get ‘em stuck, get ‘em stuck, get ‘em stuck.’ And we pressed, we won the ball and we scored.”
“We pressed high,” he added. “We did the things we worked on and it worked out. We had a lot of opportunities in this game that didn’t work out but we took advantage of that three minute period really well.”
Morristown East was able to break through the Chuckey-Doak defense with 14 minutes left in the half, sending the team’s into the break with the Knights ahead, 3-1.
Coming out of the half, the Hurricanes kept their momentum and pressed the Knights hard on offense. Eight minutes in, the Hurricanes snuck one past Knights’ keeper Nick Palazzo to make it 3-2, and with 20 minutes left, they added another goal, tying the game 3-3.
Despite numerous opportunities by both offenses, neither keeper surrendered another goal and the game ended in a draw.
“We just panicked sometimes,” Braithwaite said on his team’s second half performance. “And once we started panicking, it’s hard to get settled down. What we’re good at is maintaining possession, passing the ball on the ground, and when we panic, we just start kicking it. If you’re just kicking it, it’s real easy to defend. That’s why we wanna work the ball on the ground. It’s much harder to counter on the middle third if we’re passing on the ground.”
In the net, Palazzo had nine saves, with two crucial ones coming in the last 20 minutes to keep the game even.
“Nick played well tonight, made a lot of good saves early in the game,” Braithwaite said. “He’s been getting better and better every week, every practice, every game. For a kid who’s never played soccer before, coming out in his senior year, now he’s going us great minutes in goals and making saves. I love it.”
After the tie, Chuckey-Doak sits at 5-4-2 on the season.
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