The Perryville Pirates finished the regular season on the soccer pitch with a 8-0 mercy rule win over the Kennett Indians, and followed it up with a final win on the road and a win in the first round of the district playoff, again against Kennett.
The first three goals of the match were all scored by senior Dez Hampson, who had his second hat trick in as many home games. Hampson’s three goals all came in the first 20 minutes of the game.
Three more goals followed for the Pirates in the first half. Sophomores Ollie Turner and Luyanda Ndlovu, and junior Joseph Casas-Covarrubias scored to make the score 6-0 in favor of Perryville headed into halftime.
The second half of the match only lasted 10 minutes, as Ndlovu added his second goal of the match in the 42nd minute, and senior Lane Yamnitz ended the game with the eighth Pirate goal that enacted the Mercy rule and ended things after just 50 minutes.
Hampson said the game was a good confidence booster, as Kennett will be Perryville’s opponent in the first round of the Class 2 District 1 tournament, and four of the eight goals came from sophomore players.
“Basically it’s just more preparation for districts,” Hampson said following his second consecutive three goal game at home. “You got some more of the younger guys in just preparing for next year and for districts. We play them in the first round again, so hopefully we can execute like we did tonight. Hopefully it works out for the next games.”
Head coach Dwayne Hadler said it is very valuable to be able to get younger players into the game to give them more time to learn the system in a real game situation, and play mostly together, rather than just coming in for injured players as they had throughout the regular season.
“We wanted to see the future today and that second part of the first half we played all the younger players up for one or two and they performed well enough,” Hadler said. “They don’t know the system as well but they know what to do. They’re not as fast to perform the actions, but we played so many of the younger ones already this year at different times with injuries in different situations. So when they can all get out there together, that’s a very bright future for us. And it’s exciting to see what they can accomplish.”
The regular season ended on the road for the Pirates with a 8-0 win at Windsor in which Hampson scored 7 goals in one game, a new school record.
“It feels great because my teammate last year broke it previously at a game and then I was really striving to get that,” Hampson said. “First I was wanting to break 30 goals which felt pretty good to do and then that was coming up so I might as well go for it.”
The Pirates then began their hunt for a District championship on Monday night, Nov. 2nd, winning by the mercy rule for a third straight game with a 9-1 victory over Kennett at Notre Dame in Cape Girardeau.
Ollie Turner began the scoring in the second meeting with Kennett with a penalty kick goal in the opening minutes, this was followed by an 11th minute goal from Trey LukeFahr, another three Hampson goals, and a Jayden Galeski goal in the 37th minute to give the Pirates a 6-0 advantage at halftime.
With the big lead in the second half, most of the Pirate starters subbed out, allowing the younger players to get valuable playoff experience. Freshman Noah Cook scored the first goal of the second half, and after Kennett got on the board with their only goal of the game, Turner and junior Ethan Pohlman added goals to end the game early by way of the mercy rule with 6 minutes remaining.
“Anybody that’s played high school sports knows that going into districts for the first time There’s gonna be those jitters,” assistant coach Mike Volansky said after the dominant performance. “And it was great to get those jitters out early for the young guys. We made it to the final four last year and got third. A lot of these guys didn’t see much playing time so this is their year to go at it.”
The Pirates next saw playoff action Wednesday night, coverage of the second round can be found in next week’s edition.
