By Brenna Jackson
After losing to the Cascade Surge three weeks ago, the BYU men”s soccer team had its revenge, beating them 4-0, Saturday (June 10, 2006).
The win came after a disappointing loss to the Abbotsford Rangers, 1-0, Friday. Before Friday, the Cougars were on a four game winning streak.
Friday”s game was played after two delays due to strong gusts of wind, heavy rain and lightening.
“The water didn”t allow us to be as creatively accurate up top,” midfielder Brock Trejo said. “With that consistently happening, we didn”t have a good chance to score. In the back we played great, the midfield did well, we just didn”t score.”
The Cougars controlled the ball most of the game, but were unable to put the ball in the net.
“We had a lot of great shots but we couldn”t finish so it ended 1-0,” defender Andrew VanWagenen said.
The game”s sole goal was controversial and came when a Ranger player deflected a pass with what appeared to be his hands and scored.
The Cougars also had two major injuries when starting players Steve Magleby and Morgan Gilliam joined BYU”s growing injured list.
“We”ve had a ton of injuries,” head coach Chris Watkins said. “We”re a fairly deep team. We”ve had to lean on them and they”ve done fairly well with it. We”ve had six guys go out in the last two weeks. We”re scraping the bottom of the roster. I”m glad we”ve been able to piece it together.”
Despite missing some starting players, the Cougars started Saturday”s game against the Cascade Surge right. After keeping the Surge from touching the ball for the first minute and a half, BYU put their first goal in the net.
The Surge were never able to stop BYU”s momentum. Though the Cougars did not score again in the first half, they allowed the Surge only four shots.
“Our midfield completely dominated the game for 90 minutes,” Watkins said.
BYU controlled the second half with their first goal ten minutes in when midfielder Travis Winn”s header found the corner of the net.
“I was in the middle,” Winn said. “Kenny got the ball out wide and I came into the near post. Kenny hit a perfect ball to me and I was able to put my head on it and get a goal.”
Only a minute later, forward Tyson Miller made another goal off an assist from Winn.
The Cougars” fourth goal came in the 70th minute when defender Cameron Lamb”s far shot from the left made it past the Surge goalie.
With 12 minutes left, a Cascade player had a breakaway. Defender Ken Ojuka raced back and was able to kick the ball back to the Cougars” offense before falling to the ground with an injury. Ojuka was hurt seriously enough to force him out of the game. Because BYU had already subbed its allotted six players out, they were forced to finish the game with only ten men.
Despite being a man down, BYU was able to finish strong with a shutout.
