By Greg Gielczyk
LocalSportsJournal.com
LUDINGTON — Scoring pretty much at will right from the get go, the Ludington boys soccer team rolled to an easy 8-0 victory over Bay City Central in the Division 2 district tournament.
Playing on their home pitch Thursday night, the Orioles successfully took the first step on a road they hope leads to the state finals.
Photo/Joe Washington
Spencer Holmes recorded a hat trick to lead the Orioles scoring attack, which accumulated six goals by the end of the first half in overwhelming the Wolves, who finished with seven straight losses and a 2-16-1 record.
“We kind of had an idea that this would probably be the result,” said Ludington coach Kris Anderson. “They’ve had a challenging season all year. They don’t have a jayvee program, and had only 12 guys on the varsity. They’re really thin. But, at same time we wanted to go out and play the way we needed to play.
“And, we did a lot of good things tonight. We created scoring opportunities because a lot of guys were involved in the play. We were moving the ball around, and there were a lot of players touching it.”
Ludington’s first goal came eight minutes into the first half, but then the Orioles struck quickly as Holmes tallied his three goals within the span of a minute … and the Orioles scored five goals in 11 minutes.
The Wolves simply had no answer for the hard charging Orioles, and didn’t even put a shot on frame the entire game, which ended two minutes into the second half on the mercy rule.
Both goals in the second half came off corner kicks from Yebe Boerema, the first one going directly to Jonah Sweet, who headed the ball into the net.
After the second bounced around for a few moments, the ball fell at the feet of Aiden Malburg and he finished it. Malburg scored two goals on the night.
Photo/Joe Washington
Goals were also scored by Ultan Ryan and Steele Stowe.
In addition to his three goals, Holmes also added an assist. Ryan Kandalec had two helpers and one came off the foot of Evan Erdman.
Ludington improved its record to 16-5 on the season and the Orioles play Midland in the second round of the districts at 7 p.m. Tuesday in Big Rapids.
Midland knocked out Lapeer 3-2 in its district opener Thursday night and comes into the second round with an 11-6-3 record on the season.
“We’re going to have to play a top game next week,” Anderson said. “They’ve played some really good teams recently, so we know what we’re going to be up against. It’s going to be a tough matchup. (But) when we play well, there’s not a team out there that we won’t compete with. So that’s what we need to do, create the opportunities, capitalize on them and hopefully the breaks go the way we want them to go.”
Check out shots from the action courtesy of Joe Washington.
