Michael Pena tries to clear a ball through the legs of Plymouth’s Cesar Aguilar. Aguilar had two goals for the Pilgrims. (Photos by Nick Goralczyk)

SYRACUSE – On the cover of Sports Illustrated this week reads a line that says, “October’s all about who’s hot.” While the line refers to the annual playoff preview for Major League Baseball, the same line could be said about any team entering playoffs this month.

As the IHSAA Boys Soccer Sectionals rapidly approach, the Wawasee soccer team may be playing its best soccer of the season. The Warriors used two goals in the second half to top the visiting Plymouth Pilgrims 3-2 on Thursday night.

The two teams exchanged goals via penalty kicks in the opening minutes before Cesar Aguilar gave Plymouth back the lead with a goal off of an assist from Clay Marchall.

Tuesday night was senior night at Warrior Field and the seniors came through in a big way. In the second half Rasmus Rich knocked in a goal to tie the game at 2-2. The senior exchange student was assisted by Ricky Camargo on the goal.

In the fourteenth minute of play Wawasee’s Fernando Camargo sent the home crowd into a frenzy with the go-ahead goal. Camargo, a senior, also had Wawasee’s first goal. The Warrior defense, led by keeper Korey Knafel, held the Plymouth offense scoreless for the remainder of the match despite the Pilgrims four shots on goal.

Warrior head coach Jordan Sharp knows how big this win is for his team, “I really felt like we were the better team tonight. I just kept waiting for us to put that ball away late in the game and we finally did. Unfortunately it takes a goal for us to get going so we started a little slow but got progressively better throughout the game.”

The Warriors will turn right around and play Plymouth Monday night in the first round of the Warsaw Sectional. Sharp thinks his team can duplicate its success on Monday.

“I think that we can beat them again. We were able to see where some of their better players were and I think we have an overall better team so we can work around their better guys. We lost Jan (Jensen) tonight for a while and that hurt us so he will be back and that will help clean up our back a little bit. We have a lot of confidence with this win and will look forward to going to Warsaw on Monday night.,” stated Sharp.

Confidence is important heading into sectionals and no player may have more of it than Wawasee’s Michael Pena, “We have to keep flying on this momentum. We really needed this win going into the next game with Plymouth. Now we know we can win and that we will win on Monday night.”

The Warriors (6-8-3, 2-4-1) and Pilgrims rematch starts at 6 p.m. at Warsaw High School.