By Nicholas Huenefeld
Special to the Sentinel-Tribune
MILLBURY — The Lake boys soccer team, which suffered its first loss of the season on Tuesday against Delta, delivered a firm bounce back performance on Saturday, producing a 2-0 win over previously undefeated Bowling Green High School inside Lake Community Stadium.
“(The difference) was night and day,” Lake head coach Brian Reed said. “They came out and worked their butts off. I challenged them.
“I can’t coach them to have heart and drive and just a want to win. I think they proved that they have it today. I’m proud of them.”
As the game entered its eighth minute, Bowling Green failed to fully clear a ball, and Lake’s Mason Sneed won possession before delivering the ball into the back of the net with 32:27 left.
“I think their goalie made a bad mistake, and I got a good touch on it,” Sneed said. “It was a really good shot from far away. I was really lucky to have (that opportunity).”
Bowling Green head coach Josh Fox wasn’t pleased with the goal and his team’s early play.
“You could see it in our reaction,” he said. “Oh, now we have to start playing. Unfortunately at that point, it was just too little too late,” he said.
In the ensuing minutes, BGHS had two chances go awry as Adin Metzger’s 25-yard free kick went wide, and Jack Hover’s shot attempt sailed high.
Over the next five minutes, Lake peppered the Bobcats with five shots, including two on frame, highlighted by a dangerous opportunity from Delfino Garcia, who had a look after Bowling Green’s keeper came out, but the shot went high with 23:20 left in the half.
A shot from Travis Merrill was wide at 17:15, and a shot from Keegan Perry with 10:3 0 left was the second of back-to-back saved attempts.
Jonathan Specht’s shot attempt with 5:42 left went high and wide.
The Bobcats were able to get a shot from Tomas Meek with 3:01 on the clock, but it was saved by Lake’s goalkeeper, Mitchell Maguire.
Merrill got another wide shot attempt off with 1:17 remaining for the final look of the half for either team.
“Credit to Lake,” Fox said. “They came out with more effort and more energy than we did with a game plan that they saw through. Right from the beginning, I was kind of worried with our body language and effort.”
After Evan Barta’s shot attempt went wide in the third minute of the second half, Lake found the back of the net for the second time with 36:01 left when Specht left-footed a shot into the upper right of the net for a two-goal margin.
The Bobcats responded by controlling the offensive attack for the next 20-plus minutes, but couldn’t put anything away.
Bowling Green had multiple chances in the game’s 48th minute with a shot off the crossbar and multiple chances following two corner kick opportunities.
Maguire then saved shots with 31:17 and 19:55 left. A Bowling Green shot went wide in the 62nd minute, a shot hit the post as the clock ticked just under 18 minutes, and a follow-up dart was deflected over the net.
With just over 15 minutes remaining, another shot went high, and the Bobcats had just one more good look over the duration, which came with 4:03 to go when Lake’s Evan Barta cleared a shot out of bounds after Maguire wasn’t able to get to it.
For Lake, Sneed had a shot just off frame in the 69th minute, which was followed by a saved shot from Specht with 7:49 left and a high shot from Kolton Nowicki with 7:01 remaining.
In total, Bowling Green had 11 shot attempts with seven on frame. Maguire made four saves, while three others came of the non-goalie variety. The Flyers had 13 shots with six on frame, while Teigen Gulgin made four saves for the Bobcats.
With the outcome, the Flyers secured their first win without midfielder Preston Snyder.
“We lost Preston, which was a key injury as he was a key player for us,” Reed said. “We didn’t really make too many adjustments in the Delta game, and you could tell.
“I made a formation adjustment today, switched some personnel around, dropped Greyson (Reed) back, moved Jon (Specht) up a little bit, and it seemed to work alright.”
The Flyers (7-1-1) will be back in action at Otsego on Wednesday. Bowling Green, meanwhile, has opened the season in a strong way despite the loss as the Bobcats enter Tuesday’s tilt at Clay with a 7-1 record overall and a 4-0 performance in NLL play.
“We’ve dealt with a lot of adversity so far with guys being out for various reasons, so I’ve been happy with us kind of rising above that adversity, but at the same time, it caught up with us today,” Fox said.
“We’ve kind of been living life on the edge so to speak. We knew it might catch up with us at some point.
“Big picture, this is a small bump in the road, but we just can’t have this type of effort going forward.”
