Wildcats Roll Past Gap

RC Boys Soccer Records 8-0 Home Victory

The Rockbridge County High School boys soccer team cruised to an 8-0 Shenandoah District win over Buffalo Gap on Monday of last week in Lexington.

Parker Fountain bagged a hat trick for the Wildcats, who improved to 3-2, both overall and within the district. Jonathan Roy scored one goal and set up two others, and RC also got goals from Charlie Cosgriff, Archer De Marcellus, Rossell Sorianno and Luke Drumbl.

Wes King recorded 16 saves for the Bison, who ended the week at 0-5 overall and within Shenandoah play.

Cosgriff got the Wildcats on the board in the eighth minute, tapping in from close range after Roy made a great run into the 18-yard box and delivered a cross.

But that was the only goal for RC inside the opening half-hour. With Gap sitting back and absorbing the Wildcats’ pressure, the home side struggled to break down the visitors’ defense.

“Whenever you play a team that sits down – whenever they sit back on defense so much, which Gap obviously does at the start of the game. … It’s new for us,” RC head coach Jeffrey Tomlin said. “It took us a while to settle into that. … But we started to find passes in between, and that’s how we were able to score.”

The goals started coming fast and furious for the ’Cats later in the half. Fountain delivered a top-corner finish in the 31st minute to make it 2-0. A deflected attempt from De Marcellus found the back of the net in the 37th, and Fountain’s conversion on a 27-yard free kick gave RC a 4-0 halftime edge.

Roy set up another marker in the 49th minute, darting into the 6-yard box and creating a simple finish for Sorianno. Roy then scored one of his own in the 61st minute, firing in from 12 yards out for a 6-0 advantage.

Drumbl’s long-range effort in the 73rd minute extended the margin to 7-0, and Fountain capped off the game with a 35-yard blast with just over five minutes to go.

Fountain’s versatility is often on display for the Wildcats, who have used the junior as a winger, center midfielder and holding mid at different points already this spring.

“He’s become a really important midfielder for us,” Tomlin said of Fountain. “We deploy him in many roles. … The engine that he has in the midfield – he’s a very creative player.”

For the game, the Wildcats held a 44-0 advantage in shots and an 8-0 edge in corner kicks.

Though the competition will get tougher as the season goes along, Tomlin is hopeful that his team’s execution – more than the final scoreline itself – is a sign of things to come.

“I think it really goes to just how far we’ve come as a program over the last two years,” the RC coach said. “The goal today was to execute. We used today as, we want to execute our tactics as well as we possibly can. We saw a lot of it come out, and I’m really happy about that.”

The Wildcats were slated to play host to Riverheads last night. RC will continue district action against Fort Defiance on Thursday, starting with the junior varsity game at 5:30 p.m., with the varsity game scheduled to follow at 7.