Austin U18 boys power past Thunder
Published 9:16 pm Wednesday, June 20, 2018
The Austin U18 boys soccer team has plenty of firepower and it was able to show off how much depth it has when it beat the Rochester Thunder 12-3 in Wescott Athletic Complex Wednesday.
Seven different players scored in the win for Austin (7-0-1 overall) and Juan Vera set the tone early on as he scored all three of his goals in the first 20 minutes of the game. Vera normally doesn’t look to score that often, but he was the focal point of Austin’s offense in the first half.
“It was fun scoring some goals,” Vera said. “I like assisting usually, but I like scoring too. It was nice tonight for the people that usually don’t get the opportunity to score to get that chance.”
Austin led 8-2 at the half and it didn’t have any trouble in the second half. Kevin Ortiz, Dylan Hanegraf and Dany Vargas all had two goals for Austin and Kee Reh, Henry Tolbert and Makias Anderson each had one goal.
Reh also stopped seven of the eight shots he saw when he moved to keeper in the second half.
Austin has now closed out its home schedule for the regular season and it will play two more road games before the playoffs begin.
Although there was light rain throughout the contest, Hanegraf said it was as much fun as he’s had playing soccer all season.
“This was probably the most fun game of the year for me. We got into passing a lot as a team and we got the people that don’t play as much into a rhythm,” Hanegraf said. “We’ve played these guys twice now and they were having fun too, but we need to get back in our heads and start playing how we usually play when we get into some serious games.”