Celebrating Over 50 Years of Educational Excellence
Boys’ Soccer Team defeated All Saints’ 2 – 0
LEDGER CORRESPONDENT
Published: Wednesday, January 21, 2015 at 11:44 p.m.
Santa Fe Catholic junior Joey Dotson junior midfielder scored his 29th and 30th goals of the season in spect…acular fashion to help guide Santa Fe to a 2-0 victory over All Saints at Viking Stadium in the Class 1A District 9 semifinal.
The top-seeded Hawks (17-4-4) struck early with a Dotson goal that came in the game’s seventh minute.
Dotson’s second goal came in the 44th minute on a 30-yard unassisted run that was shot across the keeper’s face.
Dotson began his run from midfield and left a trail of Saints in his wake.
“He’s fantastic. I can’t say enough about him,” Santa Fe Catholic head coach Greg Hunt said after the game. “There are players that are good and dominate games, but he does it from midfield. He creates, he plays defense. He’s one of those players that make other people better, and these guys would do anything for him.”
Even with Dotson’s performance, Hunt said that he was generally unimpressed by his team’s performance.
“It wasn’t our best work,” he said. “But we got the early goal that we were looking for. The worse thing you can do is give a team hope when you’re the top seed and everyone’s out to get you. We’ve grown used to being the underdogs from the last couple of years and it’s kind of different playing as the first seed. We wanted to make sure a quick goal could dictate the game. Hopefully we can play a little bit better, get it moving a little bit more but we got the win. A scrappy win.”
Along with the performance of Dotson, Hunt gave praises to the play of sophomore Will Friel and the Santa Fe substitutes, who Hunt said “played their best games of the season.”
“You know, Joey might’ve scored two goals, but the man of the match to me was number #2, Will Friel on the wing,” Hunt said. “His positioning was fantastic, his effort was fantastic, you know he’s gonna pressure every ball, creating, he was fantastic tonight.”
The Hawks will face district and crosstown rival Lakeland Christian at Viking Field Friday night at 7 p.m. Hunt says that he and Viking head coach Grandy Streets share a close friendship, but he still believes that his team is superior, and capable of lifting the district title on their opponents home field.
“It’s going to be a challenge on their home field,” he said. “He’s also prepared, that team’s always prepared, he’s the best coach in the county. He’s gonna have a gameplan and hopefully we come out and do our job. I talked to my boys the other night and told them that we’re the top seed, and the strongest team. We just have to go out and play. We can’t beat ourselves.”