On Tuesday, October 7, Linganore’s Varsity Boys Soccer
team faced Urbana High School in one of the most
anticipated matches of the season.
Linganore High School’s (LHS) team has been on a tear this season, winning their first 8 games and only letting in 3 goals all season.
The outstanding play from the team up to this point has landed them at 1st place in both the Class 3A West I Region standings and the Spires Region standings.
However, this Tuesday’s game leaves many questions unanswered for this year’s team. The Lancers started out sluggish, conceding a goal in the first 45 seconds off of a header from a long throw.
This killed any momentum the Lancers felt going into the game as they just could not seem to find opportunities to move forward and attack the Hawks’ defense.
“It [the goal] made it very difficult for us to really get our flow early on in the game,” said LHS head coach and social studies teacher Zackary Yurich.
However, Yurich did share a semi-positive outlook on the first half of the game.
“[That first goal] focused us and made us really come together and work hard as a team to come back from that,” Yurich said.
The coach’s influence really started to show its effect on the Lancers early in the second half. The boys started to dominate possession and play their game in the first few minutes. With the ball staying in Urbana’s half of the field, it seemed the equalizer was bound to come sooner or later.
With 22 minutes left in the second half, LHS junior Luca DeCostanza played in a cross to junior Wyatt Valenzuela, who took one touch and volleyed the ball into the bottom left corner to tie the game for the Lancers.
With the game now tied and Linganore with the momentum, the result looked to be in favor of the Lancers in the last 20 minutes.
Nonetheless, just a few minutes later in the 68th minute, Urbana scored a second goal from a deflection off a corner. Linganore still fought to try and get a draw out of the game but their efforts were unsuccessful.
Urbana continued to push down the field, and with four minutes left on the clock, Urbana threw a long ball all the way to the box where it was finished by Urbana’s striker. This goal was the nail in the coffin for the Lancers.
“Defending set pieces is really the biggest thing in that kind of game,” Yurich said. “We’ve conceded 3 goals all season before that, and all 3 of them came off of either long throw-ins or corners.”
The Linganore Lancers now drop to 8-1 on the season, with just three games left in the season and playoffs on the horizon. The Lancers hope to come back strong with a win against South Hagerstown this week.
