By Ron Rop
Local Sports Journal
You couldn’t blame the Fruitport Trojans or the Western Michigan Christian Warrior soccer teams if they were a bit distracted on Monday night.
The Trojans, which captured a 3-0 victory over WMC, is in the stretch of six games in 11 days. The Warriors, on the other hand, have a huge matchup with a conference championship hanging in the balance.
WMC will host Covenant Christian, the No. 1 team in Division 4 on Tuesday at Warrior Field. The Trojans begin Lakes 8 tournament action on Wednesday.
Explosive forward Zach Gilson scored two goals, one in each half, to lead the Trojans (10-3-3). Noah Hendricks added an insurance goal in the second half.
“Zach is having a great year,” Fruitport coach Greg Kobylak said. “He’s a finisher. He knows how to finish and sometimes he creates things for himself often his teammates are doing that.”
WMC, which dropped to 7-6-1, was outshot 16-6 by the host Trojans.
“We’re lucky we’ve been healthy, for the most part,” Kobylak said. “We are playing in these competitive games and rivalry games and we want to put out best foot forward.”
For the Warriors, it was another step in getting ready for the postseason.
“We want to play fast teams at the end of the season,” WMC coach David Hulings said. “This was a good game for us to play fast and we’ve got another one (Tuesday) to play fast and another one on Saturday to play fast. That’s all we want to do is play fast teams.
“All this stuff will pay off for us when we play in Division 4,” he said.
