The Leavenworth boys’ soccer team had their season-opener tied 1-1 in the second half on Tuesday evening, but a quartet of goals by Mill Valley in a span of less than 16 minutes opened up the game and sent the Pioneers to a 5-1 defeat at Warren Middle School.
“They hit us with a completely different pace,” Leavenworth head coach Joe Waldron said. “They started running all over us, they got physical with us, they started winning balls, and they started putting us in situations where we didn’t have enough time and space to make good decisions. And then we started to panic.”
Waldron also said the beginning of the first half was slow for the Pioneers (0-1). Mill Valley (1-0) scored just nine minutes, 13 seconds into the game when defender Riley Vornhof came all the way from the back to one-touch a cross from the right side while it was still in the air, and the Jaguars had the first lead.
Leavenworth tied it with 12:25 left before halftime when Christian Swift had a direct kick deflected on the dive by Jaguar goalkeeper Taylor Hunter, but it bounced off the crossbar right to Benny Baumann, who followed with a header right into the center of the net. Swift was credited with the assist.
“We scored a goal, and we kind of leveled things out,” Waldron said. “We started playing with the level of intensity, enthusiasm, and desire that we needed to compete, and we were fine. Then we just kind of ran out of gas in the second half. We had a couple guys that were having some heat issues.”
With temperatures lingering around 95 degrees well after six o’clock, the Pioneers fell behind for good with 5:06 gone by in the second half when a handball in the box gave a penalty kick to Mill Valley’s Taylor Reinoehl, which he booted into the left side of the net to make it 2-1.
Leavenworth had been staving off the Jaguars effectively despite being outshot 16-2 in the first half. Mill Valley’s Chad Gilmore had had two chances late in the half to put them in front, but his first shot hit the right post and his second was slapped over the crossbar by Pioneer goalie Anthony Gasbarre.
In the second half, though, the navy and silver kept the foot on the gas, making it 3-1 with 30:08 left when David Stichka shot it across his body into the left corner. Leavenworth nearly cut the lead in half five minutes later when Patrick Smith got a shot past the diving Hunter, but it barely missed left, and the Jaguars went on to score twice on corner kicks in the next six minutes. The first deflected to Jack Lopez, who was just able to shoot it inside the left post, and the second deflected to Camden Bonder, who was just able to roll it across the goal line.
