Westfield finally finds the net
By Dave Buschenfeldt
Though the Westfield boys soccer team has an explosive offense, there are some games when the Bulldogs just can't seem to find the back of the net. After senior A.J. Sheta sent a shot just wide of the left post off a trick penalty kick less than 20 seconds into Tuesday's Concorde District quarterfinal against Centreville, it looked to coach Tom Torres like it might be one of those nights.
“When we started with missing a penalty kick in the first 15 seconds, I thought it was going to be a long day,” Torres said after seeing senior Trey Messiah line up for the penalty shot, then tap the ball to Sheta running on. “They're pretty creative on their own set pieces. If you were going to tell me that A.J. misses a shot from eight yards out, it boggles your mind.
“We've got set pieces that we're organized on. The PK is something that mystifies us. We're just trying to make something happen.”
Westfield has drawn three penalty kicks this season, and none have resulted in goals. Sheta said he and Messiah were just trying to shake things up.
“The first two PKs of the season, we missed, so we decided to do something different,” he said.
Sheta more than made up for his early miss when he blasted a shot from 35 yards out that slipped through the fingers of Wildcats goalie Steven Linane and into the net to put Westfield ahead for good 17 minutes before halftime.
The Bulldogs added two more tallies in the second half by Messiah and senior Ramin Movahed to win 3-0 and advance to Wednesday's Concorde District semifinal against Robinson. The game occurred after The Times went to press.
“Today, we came out and played hard,” Sheta said. “Now that we got past the first round, we can relax just a little bit, but not too much because we still have games [to play].”
Westfield automatically qualified for the Northern Region tournament by reaching the district semifinals, but a win against Robinson would put the Bulldogs in the district championship game for the fourth straight year.
“Hopefully the lights work, and we'll do our job,” Torres said, referencing their regular-season game at Robinson when the lights went out. “It's our opportunity to play a district final at home. We'll do the best we can.”
As for Centreville, the season ends with a final record of 3-7-3. First-year coach Brian Cochran saw some progress out of his team this year, and he is confident that the Wildcats will have more success in 2009 with 15 players returning.
“Just like any season, you take steps forward, and we started taking some steps back,” said Cochran, who coached at Stuart for 16 years. “It's something to work on for next year. We're only graduating five seniors, so the core of our kids are going to be rising seniors. It was a learning experience for me and it was a learning experience for them.”