Battle Mountain boys soccer holds on to complete season sweep of Eagle Valley
Ruben Serna's late goal energized Eagle Valley, but the rally came up short for the home team
The Battle Mountain boys soccer team learned an important lesson in last week’s 1-1 tie to 5A Pine Creek.
“A one goal isn’t enough — especially on the road,” said head coach Dave Cope, whose team applied the adage in Tuesday’s rivalry rematch against Eagle Valley in Gypsum.
Four days after a chintzy late goal resulted in a 1-1 tie to the Eagles, the Huskies held off a charging Devils team — buoyed by Ruben Serna’s goal with 16:37 remaining — to claim a 2-1 win and complete the Eagle County season sweep.
“A lot of our good teams have come in here and struggled. So, it’s never easy,” Cope continued. “Credit to Eagle Valley, because they hadn’t had much of the ball, but they stayed in the game, stayed in the game and they got their goal. That’s why we needed a second.”
The Huskies got on the board 2 minutes and 54 seconds into the game when Grey Glowacki rose to meet Fernando Lucero’s corner kick and sent a header into the back of the net. From there, Battle Mountain controlled pace and patiently worked the ball around, searching for an opportunity to extend the lead. Jonathan Espinoza’s shot from the right side of the 18 rammed into the crossbar with 21:40 to go. Leading scorer Jakob Methvin had a pair of opportunities in the 24th and 33rd minutes, but neither went.
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Nothing materialized offensively for Eagle Valley either until 4:10 to go, when Daniel Perez met Yael Carillo’s corner kick perfectly in the air and tried to replicate Glowacki’s play. The missile squeezed though a tight Huskies defense, but Anthony Raudales was perfectly positioned to catch the header in his chest.
“If you’re Anthony you’ve got to be really proud of the season you’ve put together,” Cope said of the junior, who learned the position this summer and stepped in for injured two-year starter Ezequiel Alvarez. Alvarez is expected to return on Thursday against Evergreen.
“He fully stepped up in a position where he wasn’t planning on playing,” Methvin said of Raudales. “I think he’s really helped our team and I know we are really proud of him.”
While the Huskies won the first-half shots-on-goal and possession battles, Cope has been around long enough to know wins and losses aren’t decided by metrics alone.
“That’s what we said at halftime. As much as we’re dominating here, you have to get a second,” he said. “We saw down in Pine Creek that crazy things can happen.”
In the first 10 minutes of the second half, Methvin took three shots and Glowacki, Charlie Strauch and Carlos Gardea each fired one as well. With 28:32 on the clock, Glowacki broke the defense down from midfield. The senior dished right side to Gardea, who one-touched a centering pass to a charging Methvin. Rodelo rushed to meet the ball at the top of the box, but was helpless in the one-on-one against Methvin, who lifted it over the diving goalie for the 2-0 lead.
While the Eagle Valley faithful remained subdued for the first hour — “It was a little quiet for an Eagle Valley game,” Cope remarked — a rivalry contest can only remain tame for so long. In the 63rd minute, Serna roused the crowd to its feet by lobbing a long-range shot from just inside the visitor’s sideline over the outstretched arms of Raudales and into the back right corner of the net. The on-field energy shift was palpable.
“Oh yeah for sure,” Serna said. “When I scored, it motivated the teammates. We got all hyped, we started screaming and from there we kept on going.”
The energized Devils scurried up and down the field with renewed vigor, peppering the Huskies defense with shots from everywhere. Even goalie Nico Rodelo launched a free kick from just past midfield which forced Raudales to make a diving save. A Devils’ corner kick at 6:34 ended up going out the back, but four minutes later, Javier Aguayo’s header on a similar play required a skilled save by the Husky keeper to avoid calamity.
“They definitely got some energy, sped up their pace of play and brought a lot more intensity and I don’t think we were ready for that,” Methvin said of the furious final 15 minutes. “But we held them and came out with the result we wanted.”
Methvin rode the hip pocket of Fernando Ruiz right into the penalty box, where Ruiz hit the deck. The now hyped student section — which waited until the lights came on to provide their first “Let’s go Devils!” chant — let the officials know their displeasure regarding the no call on Eagle Valley’s last formidable scoring opportunity.
“We don’t want to give up because we still want to go to playoffs, so we went in strong. We wanted to win or tie — we didn’t want to lose, but it is what it is,” Serna said after the 2-1 loss dropped Eagle Valley to 6-6-2. The senior said his team’s communication improved vastly compared to the Devils’ 2-0 loss on Oct. 3 in Edwards.
“We definitely talked a lot more. We looked up, we knew where each other were going to be,” he said.
The No. 32 Devils sit right on the edge of playoff security going into Thursday’s game against No. 17 Glenwood Springs in Gypsum.
“We need to win that one,” Serna said.
The Huskies, meanwhile, are focused on getting over various illnesses caught during fall break.
“I think we’ll be good for playoffs and that’s what matters,” Methvin said. “(We) just need to continue to bring intensity, play our game and lock in.”
The defending state champs improved to 9-3-1 and finished the league calendar 6-0, rising to the No. 2 spot in the CHSAA Selection & Seeding Index. But Cope said crazy things always happen in the final week of the regular season.
“If you look around the state, somebody will drop points tonight. Somebody will drop games against a rival, somebody will drop a result,” he said. “You sort of look ahead, but you can’t look ahead.”