SYRACUSE — The Wawasee boys soccer team played its first home game Saturday morning when they welcomed Northern Lakes Conference foe Concord to Warrior Field. The Warriors were looking for its first win on the season but failed to find the back of the net today, dropping the match, 5-0, to the visiting Minutemen.

Wawasee knew it would have its hands full playing a team that came into the game ranked 10th in state poll, but fired out of the gate and kept the ball on Concord’s end of the field for the start of the first half.

Warrior senior goalie Josh Secor denied several Minutemen shots in what was part of a collectively strong defensive first half for the home team.

Wawasee threatened with the game’s first shot on goal early but couldn’t keep pace with the Minutemen much longer. Concord senior Christopher Horner broke the game’s scoreless tie on a pass from fellow senior David Diaz. Though the Warriors held off the other scoring attempts from Concord the rest of the half, Horner’s goal would prove to be the deciding one in the match.

The Minutemen scored early and often in the game’s second half. Diaz got his name back on the stat sheet with a goal in the early minutes of the second half and the senior was able to tack on his second of the day a few minutes later giving the visitors a 3-0 advantage.

Logan Miller took advantage of a tiring defense with a goal in the 72nd minute on a pass from Diaz. Concord did not call off the dogs after Miller’s goal, with freshmen Paco Ocampo scoring in the games 78th minute. Concord finished with 16 shots on goal while Wawasee managed only four.

The loss drops Wawasee to 0-2 on the season and 0-1 in NLC play. 
Following the game, Warrior head coach Tom Taylor praised his team’s energy against such a talented opponent describing Wawasee’s effort as “hard fought.”

Taylor continued saying “I’m happy with the improvement that we have made over last year.” In regards to what went wrong against Concord, Taylor really only had one complaint “We needed to do better on goal kicks. We kept giving them the ball back on those. That is something we had to do better today.”

When asked what needs to be improved before the game next Thursday at West Noble, the coach remarked that their main goal was to improve on today’s defensive effort. “We played really good defense today and that will be focus next week, playing even better defense…these guys did exactly what we asked of them today so we can’t be upset about anything.”

In junior varsity action, the Warriors played a solid first half keeping Concord scoreless before dropping their match 3-0 to the Minutemen JV team.