By: Joe Blystone
METAMORA (October 5, 2023) – Dave Skoczyn’s Evergreen Vikings were like a pack of mailmen. Through rain, wind, and gloom of night they went on their appointed task and made a delivery, in this case, a share of an NWOAL soccer title with an 8-0 shutout of Swanton.
That victory keeps the Vikings one game ahead of Delta and Wauseon, each having one league game left to play, with the Vikes and Panthers squaring off in the finale.
“I pulled the seniors in before the game because I wanted them to understand just because this game is what it is, not to act like we have done anything yet,” Skoczyn explained of the facts that there are still more goals for the season.
“There is still more work to do, we know we still have to play a very good team in Delta, and we still have goals in the postseason as well.”
“We have to figure out some things yet as players and with conditions like tonight the ball bounces funny ways with the rain, the turf is wet, the wind is blowing so yeah we have to make sure we are doing the right things going forward.”
“Some of our passing and moving tonight like we did, is what we have been trying to get to for literally four years.”
It took all of just over five minutes for Evergreen to get the only goal they really needed when Brodie Setmire dumped a pass inside to Tyson Woodring who beat the Bulldog goalie in the lower quadrant at the 34:11 mark.
Woodring and the Vikings were far from finished for the night, as the elements never really phased them.
Twice in the next 13 minutes, Nick Rosinski went left, then right to Woodring circling to the net for 1-v-1’s and the high scoring senior put egg in the carton two times over to make it 3-0 with still 20:33 left in the half.
At that time Woodring left the game for the rest of the stanza but some of the Evergreen underclassmen took over.
Konnor Sanford intercepted a clearing pass, wound up and blasted a laser into the upper half with 12:03 on the clock, then a minute and a half later Gavin Raby picked a Swanton clearing kick, split a defender and the goalie finding himself with an open net to pump home the Vikes fifth goal.
Evergreen tallied three more in the second half. Woodring found Sanford on the left side and the junior attacker drilled another bullet into the back of the net to initiate the running clock with 37:30 left.
Shortly after Sanford’s second goal, Brady Kanneman’s long throw in was controlled by Setmire moving left to right through the middle for a score, then Rosinski topped off the night, knocking one home on John Herdman’s feed.
“We moved Brodie to the left because he can cut it back so well,” Skoczyn said talking about his unsung senior forward.
“We know what he has, he knows he isn’t the fastest kid but we don’t care about that. we want him to control the ball and he got the first assist tonight and he kept moving the ball in and moving the ball in, so good for him, we wanted him to get a goal tonight.”
Evergreen rattled off 27 shots in the game while the two above mentioned Bulldog attempts were the only shots Swanton had.
Evergreen is now 13-1-1 on the year while Swanton falls to 1-11-2.
Joe can be reached at publisher@thevillagereporter.com