McClain boys soccer opens season with shutout over Fairfield
GREENFIELD — The McClain boys varsity soccer team opened up the new season under first-year head coach Nick McNeal with an impressive 9-0 victory over visiting Fairfield, Monday night at McClain Field.
Senior Johnny Free led the McClain scoring attack with three goals (hat-trick), while fellow senior Avery Voss and sophomore Hunter Hice netted two goals each.
The Tigers led 8-0 at the half and added just a single goal by Free in the second period to finish off the scoring in the contest.
“I’m very pleased with our overall effort (Monday),” McNeal told The Highland County Press. “We kept attacking the goal and played solid defense the whole game, which resulted in the shutout.
“Johnny Free, our senior captain, really stepped up offensively scoring those three goals, and I think we had five different boys account for our nine goals.”
[[In-content Ad]]
Senior Brock Dean scored McClain’s first goal at the 33:39 mark of the first half, and freshman Luke Sanchez added the Tigers other goal coming at the 28:04 mark of the opening period.
Fairfield’s second-year head coach Jacob Alexander knows this will be mostly a learning and rebuilding year for his youthful Lion squad, which lost nine seniors to graduation.
“We are a very young team with just one senior, two juniors and a sophomore returning from last year,” Alexander said. “So we have a lot of youth and plenty of new faces that are still learning the game, and it really showed tonight.
“I did think we played much better in the second half when sophomore James Bentley moved to the goal and gave up just the one score, so I thought he did an outstanding job defensively and had some fabulous punts, too.”