Gallery by Tina Laney
Beckley – The strength of Beckley’s soccer team this season has been its defense, having allowed just seven goals in 13 games and no more than two in any single game heading into Tuesday’s matchup with regional foe and perennial title contender George Washington.
The strength remained in place for the first 50 minutes Tuesday before the Patriots broke through.
Wes Goodwin scored goals in the 50th and 75th minutes while Michael Luechauer added one in the 68th as Beckley yielded a season high three goals in a 3-1 loss at The Paul Cline Memorial Youth Sports Complex in Beckley.
In total the Flying Eagles yielded nine shots on goal and survived early danger in their defensive third with the first 10 minutes of the game primarily played there.
“We had an idea of something we wanted to do coming in and we realized pretty quickly we needed to change it,” Beckley coach Steve Laraba said. “We expressed the changes and they didn’t quite happen fast enough. We got them to halftime and talked a little more and the guy responded well to the things we needed them to do.”
“We weren’t real sure what their defense was going to look like,” GW head coach Erik Engle said. “Sometimes Steve’s come to us or we’ve come to Woodrow and I’ve seen them play wide open soccer, sometimes he might play dropped back defense where everybody’s in the back. I never know what I’m going to get because he just prepares very well for any game we have. Going in we weren’t sure what it was really going to look like and it just took a little while for us to figure out what they were going to let us be able to do and how we might be able to get some sort of offensive flow going.”
Despite managing just one shot on goal, a 74th minute strike from Tyler Snyder, the Flying Eagles weren’t without their opportunities in the opening half. Ten minutes in they managed to move the ball into the attacking third but two scoring opportunities were snuffed by a GW block at the edge of the box and a kick that grazed the side of the crossbar.
“That’s going to happen,” Laraba said. “You’re going to miss some chances at times but the guys are learning from playing and learning from their mistakes.”
The missed opportunities proved fatal in the second half with GW creating space and one-on-one opportunities for Goodwin and Luechauer.
“We looked at the defense they were playing and tried to find the open area and make sure we we were able get the ball into those open areas with players either making runs into them,” Engle said. “I think we were a little too direct, too straight run in the first half and we tried to really work off of making some of those diagonal runs with balls from the back to really get into those soft spots. It really was a situation where it took a first half to figure out here those spaces were that we could exploit.”
Down 2-0, Snyder finally cashed in on an opportunity and the Flying Eagles nearly generated another scoring opportunity seconds later but Goodwin broke loose and squelched the momentum, providing an insurance goal for the visitors.
The loss, just the third of the season for the Flying Eagles and their second in their last three games, provides them with a litmus test just two weeks away from the start of postseason play.
“I think it shows us where the level is and where we need to be,” Laraba said. “If we want to be playing here (int he state tournament) in November, we have to be able to play teams of that caliber with a little more quality and eliminating mistakes that punish us.”
Beckley (9-3-2) will host Nicholas County on Thursday.
Email: tylerjackson@lootpress.com and follow on Twitter @tjack94
