The Stone Memorial Panthers put together one of their best games of the season last week when they blanked visiting Watertown, 6-0.
SMHS had a solid effort offensively, peppering the Watertown goal in both halves. Then defensively, the Panthers limited WHS to only four shots on goal the whole night.
“Watertown has some really good individual skill, and they’re very aggressive,” said Stone coach Micah Grenz. “Soccer is all about creating a mismatch. When you have the ball create a mismatch, and when they have it you need to create a mismatch.
“Since we know they have good individual skill, we wanted to try and have a second person there around the ball. We really want to do that against everyone we play.”
Stone Memorial rolled out to a 3-0 advantage. Liam Fuentes opened things with a goal in the 6th minute of action. Isaiah Richard made it 2-0 with a goal in the 17th minute, and Owen David scored in the 29th minute, just before halftime.
“We started four or five guys that hadn’t started a varsity game this year,” Grenz said. “Tonight it wasn’t like it was any one player doing it all. it was good team soccer. That is what we want.”
Stone kept the pressure on in the second half as the Panthers put three more shots into the back of the net.
Bryson Whitmill tallied the fourth goal of the night, scoring in the 52nd minute of the match. Johnathan Warlick scored in the 62nd minutes, and the final goal came in the 63rd minute when Austin Machado scored with a shot in the upper right corner to make it 6-0.
“I feel really good about where we’re at right now. We have four straight wins,” Grenz said. “We’ve had some games earlier this season where we actually played than we’re doing right now, but we just couldn’t score. We knew at some point, it would click. The guys feel good about it.”
The playoffs begin May 6.
“We will try to incorporate a few finishing touches in our play, just so we’re ready for the district tournament,” the coach added. “Any team we play in the tournament will have already seen us, so we want to do the same things, but adding different wrinkles.
“We’re finally healthy. About a week ago was the first game, since the first game of the season, that we actually had everyone healthy and in a uniform. This time of the year is so much fun.”