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BOYS SOCCER: Joplin blanks College Heights

By:
Brock Sisney

The Joplin Eagles netted six goals after halftime during their 7-0 home win on Thursday against College Heights Christian.

The Eagles scored those six goals over a 20-minute stretch of the second half from 28 minutes, 5 seconds through 8:15 remaining in regulation.

College Heights finished with three shots on the night.

“I think it was just slowing down a bit, figuring out how to respond to the pressure,” Joplin coach Josh Thompson said. “College Heights did a great job of putting on the pressure in the first half, and I think it’s probably just hard to keep up that tempo. They did a great job of just throwing us off our game. Second half, we were able to find our ground game. We’ve been a much better second-half team this year, for whatever reason, so I don’t know if that’s just our thing or what, but we definitely settled in more.”

Joplin senior Carlos Palma scored the lone goal of the first half and then fellow senior Adam Montanez, Palma, senior Grayden Cravens, senior Luciano Reyes, Montanez, and Ely Montanez deposited second-half goals.

The Eagles definitely spread the wealth.

“That’s a big deal for our guys,” Thompson said. “It’s just a lot of fun whenever the team can spread the ball around like that. And then it’s whoever is the closest to a goal at the end gets the goal. It makes the game fun, it makes us hard to defend, and it’s everything you want to see.”

The Eagles finished with their fifth shutout of the season and their second in a row, only two days after their 8-0 win over Central Ozark Conference rival Carl Junction.

“We were messy in the first half,” Thompson said. “We couldn’t do a lot even defensively. They were putting on more pressure. Second half, again, we cleaned it up and we were able to win balls in the air, 50-50 balls we were able to start stepping in on, and guys who winning possession is their strength were able to actually flex a little bit. Proud they turned it around.”

Class 4 Joplin improved to 13-5 overall on the season, and the Eagles are back in action on Tuesday with a big conference match at home against Ozark.

“We’d like to have a couple games back, but I can’t be too displeased looking forward to where we’re at,” Thompson said. “We’ll have Ozark to start off next week as a big test. We would like to have Neosho back and Carthage back and have another chance at those. Ozark will be a good one to let us know if we’re where we want to be at this point.”

Class 1 College Heights (with McAuley Catholic) dropped to 10-4 on the season and the Cougars saw their winning streak end at 10.

College Heights lost three straight matches to start the season, then started winning on Sept. 6 with a 2-1 overtime victory over Class 3 McDonald County.

“It was rough,” College Heights coach Scott Yount said. “We just came out flat, and we still had some decent opportunities in the first half, some good overlapping balls, and just missed a couple square-ball opportunities that could have made the difference. Just hoping to come out with a little more intensity in the second half, but we went flat again.”

College Heights welcomes Marshfield, Aurora, and Barstow for the College Heights Invitational on Saturday.

The Cougars play Marshfield at 10 a.m., while Aurora and Barstow face off in the other semifinal match.

The championship game will be played at College Heights with third place contested at Ozark Christian College. Championship and third-place matches are slated for a 2 p.m. start.

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