FAYETTEVILLE – One of Richmond Senior High School’s varsity soccer team’s most impressive wins of the season came when it stunned Sandhills Athletic Conference foe Jack Britt High School 3-0 on Sept. 5.
Back in action on the road Wednesday to wrap up the regular season two-game series against the Buccaneers, it was Richmond that walked off the pitch on the wrong side of the scoreboard. Jack Britt (6-5, 3-3 SAC) scored two unanswered goals to slip by the Raiders (5-7, 3-4) by a final score of 2-1.
First-year head coach Chris Larsen’s team has had two tough matches to start the week, as it was narrowly defeated by rival Pinecrest High School on Monday at home. With the back-to-back SAC losses, the Raiders have traded spots in the SAC standings with Jack Britt, falling from third to fourth place.
“I thought we came out pretty good tonight and took it to them the first handful of minutes,” Larsen shared of his team’s effort. “I’m happy with what I saw — we knocked the ball around and had them on their heels early.”
It was the Raiders who struck first, as they used the momentum from the opening minutes of the match to get out to an early 1-0 lead. In the 10th minute, senior forward Alexis Gonzalez blasted his fourth goal of the season, which is now tied with Carlos Alcocer and Luke Hawks for the team lead.
Gonzalez took a touch near midfield and raced into the offensive zone to take a shot from 30 yards out that laced its way past Jack Britt’s keeper and into the upper left 90-degree corner. Richmond would hold the lead for 12 minutes before the Bucs would knot the game at one in the 22nd minute on a back post tap that beat a diving Jackson Haley in net.
The 1-1 score would hold until halftime.
“Tonight was another physical matchup with a lot of fouls and handful of cards,” Larsen noted. “We expect it to be like that when we play a quality team like Jack Britt.”
It was that physicality that led that to the eventual game-winning goal for the Buccaneers. In the 62nd minute, a battle for the ball near the top of Richmond’s defensive zone saw contact made between a player for each team. Larsen described the scene as a Jack Britt player “laying on top of our guy, which you don’t expect to see happen and go as a no-call (by the official).”
While both teams tried to sort out the collision, Jack Britt used “a quick restart” to get the ball past the Richmond defense, resulting in another tap in past Haley.
“Overall, I thought we had better opportunities to score and we controlled the ball more than them,” Larsen concluded. “But we just couldn’t find back of net in final 18 minutes. There were a few chances for us just outside the 18-yard box, but our Achilles heel this year is not finding back of the net.”
Richmond will be back in action Thursday at home against another tough opponent, this time in non-conference Terry Sanford High School (12-1, 9-0 3A/4A Patriot Athletic Conference). The match is scheduled for 7 p.m.
