Butler blanks Hopewell
BUTLER TWP —
Early on, it has
been an exclamation point.
The Golden
Tornado opened the season Saturday afternoon with a 1-0 win over Hopewell in a
non-section match at Butler Intermediate High School.
Sam Horne scored
the lone goal with six minutes, 17 seconds to play in the first half and a
strong defensive performance secured the victory.
“I came into the
season unsure of our defense,” Mohney admitted. “We lost three out of our four
starters, but we didn’t give up a goal during either preseason game and we
didn’t give up a goal here, either.”
Junior goalkeeper
Adam Voelker recorded six saves to earn the shutout in net. His biggest test
came with a little over nine minutes to play. Hopewell’s Nate Burak had a good
look at the net and fired a shot to the short side, but Voelker dived to his
right to make the stop.
“Voelker did what
he needed to do,” said Mohney. “The couple saves that he needed to make, he
made them and that’s what we want from him.”
Butler (1-0)
earned the majority of possession throughout the match, outshot the Vikings
15-8 and had a 7-3 advantage in corner kicks.
“We try to get
better every time we’re out here. We did well with certain things,” said
Mohney. “We created a lot of chances. Unfortunately, we only put away the one.
We’ll keep working on that, among other things.”
Anthony Werth provided
the assist on Horne’s goal and paced the Tornado with four shots, two of which
were on net. Dan Cleary hit the post twice, while Steven Benson, Logan Angert,
Wesley Eckstein and Matt Huey fired two shots apiece.
The scoring play
was initially set up with a pass to Angert. The forward dropped it back to
Werth, who struck a cross to Horne a few steps inside the penalty box. Horne
quickly deposited the ball high and to the left of Hopewell goalie Eli Loncar.
“Sam timed his
run well, had an awesome turn and a great shot,” said Mohney.
After struggling
to gain any sort of momentum in the first half, the Vikings found a few more
opportunities in the second.
“We definitely
improved in the second half,” said Hopewell coach Nick Mohrbacher. “In the
first half, we did not have a lot of the possession. They had the ball in our
end pretty much the whole time.
“First game
coming out, we were a little rusty,” he added. “A lot of these guys are
inexperienced, so just to build on one half shows that we have room for
improvement and we are improving.”
Hopewell received
a prime opportunity to tie the game with about 26 minutes to play after Michael
Michalko was awarded a penalty kick on a foul just inside the top of the box.
However, his kick harmlessly sailed to the right of the post.
Despite the loss,
Mohrbacher hopes the competition against a Triple-A team will help his Vikings,
who have made the WPIAL Class AA playoffs the past two seasons.
“We’ve always
scheduled tough teams,” the Hopewell coach said. “We’ve tried to really
challenge ourselves so we’re prepared for the playoffs. Playing a Triple-A team
like Butler, we knew it would be a challenge coming in and it was.
“It gives us a
good barometer this season to play a quality opponent early on,” Mohrbacher
added. “I know this is a quality-coached team, so the fact that we hung in
there is good for us.” -
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