The No. 1 seeded Lynchburg-Clay Mustangs soccer team kicked of its tournament run on Wednesday night as they hosted West Union, a familiar Southern Hills Athletic Conference team, and played them to a shutout final of 12-0.
The Mustangs got started early with a goal from Kyle Luneke, who had four goals in the game. That goal was just three minutes into the first period. Tyler Brinkman followed that up with a goal of his own with 34:34 to go to maker it 2-0.
Three more goal were made in the first period from Brandon Storer (30:43), Quintin Smith (19:46) and Noah Scott closed out the first period scoring with a goal at the 18:33 mark.
In the second half, it was more of the same thing for the Mustangs as their stifling defense did not allow the ball to cross over to their side of the field very many times.
Kyle Luneke collected his second and third goals to start the second period at 34:01 and 31:25, the second being off a Noah Scott assist.
Lynchburg scored another goal at 14:05 and shortly thereafter (8:10), Luneke scored his fourth and final goal of the night.
Austin Chisman (5:52), Noah Scott (4:05) and Bobby Merry (1:00) finished off scoring for the Mustangs bringing the final to 12-0 in favor of Lynchburg and taking them to the District semi final game on Saturday.
This marks the third year in a row that the Mustangs have captured a sectional title.
“West Union played us really tough when we played them earlier in the season,” said Lynchburg coach Dennis West after the win. “They played us terrifically even in the first half. We scored a goal with about six seconds to go in the first half and then two real quick goals to start the second half, and then the game got stopped and we ended up beating them 3-0.
“We have just been playing real high quality soccer and tonight the kids just came out ready to play and ready to take care of business. This is the kind of soccer we’re going to have to play if we’re going to make any kind of run in the tournament. We’ll need to play with this kind of intensity and that kind of unselfish play. We had Luneke with three goals, but the rest of them were spread out all over the place. That makes it difficult on a team to play us because you can’t just stick to one scorer and shut us down. You better be ready to play defense on a whole group of people. We got good play from everyone from the top to the bottom of the lineup.”
The Mustangs now move to the district finals on Saturday where they will face Minford.
“I don’t know much about them,” said Dennis west about Minford. “I haven’t been focused too much on down the road. I have been focused on the games we had tonight. They’re going to be a good team. They play in the Southern Ohio Conference and that’s a really good soccer league. We’re going to have to play really good soccer down there on Saturday. We’ll get ready and show up and do the best we can.”
Reach Robert Stegbauer at 937-393-3456 ext. 1679 or on Twitter @RStegbauer.
