In the early going, it was Orange County that looked in control as the Hornets made the most of their size and pressed forward with their physical brand of play. The Hornets took an early lead in the first half, but Monticello answered back just before the break. With the momentum in their favor, the Mustangs were able to keep the visiting Hornets quiet in the second half, and on a tic-tac-toe play with teammate TJ McDermott, Matt Wolanksi put Monticello out in front for good as they picked up a 2-1 win to keep their season alive in the Jefferson District quarterfinals.
“Orange is a good team and you’ve got to come to play with your big-boy pants on every time,” said Monticello coach Adam Southall. “But we did. Tonight we got down early but battled back as a team.”
Five minutes into the game, Shane Bartholomew gave Orange the 1-0 lead on a header that was perfectly placed by Cody Bennett. However, from that point forward both defenses and midfields settled in.
The Mustangs tied things up with three minutes to play in the half when Will Lambert broke loose on a beautiful spin move, found teammate Brent Loth on the right side of the net who subsequently found a streaking McDermott.
After the break, Nester Jara threatened to score for Monticello on a soaring kick from the midfield that just bounced off the crossbar of the net. Ten minutes later Wolanksi struck.
“It was with my fellow senior TJ McDermott,” Wolanksi said. “We’re two of the three seniors on the team and we’ve been playing together for a while through club soccer. Both of us worked, sprinted up the field. (It was a) give-and-go and I just put it in the back of the net.”
For the Hornets, allowing the go-ahead goal was a simple defensive mistake, but one that proved costly as the Mustangs dug in defensively and held on to the lead for good.
“One of the hard lessons that you learn is that the one moment you dog it a little bit, say ‘I’m a little bit tired. Oh they’ll take care of it,’ it jumps up and bites you,” said Orange coach Dwane Pugh. “Except for those two key times where they scored on us, I felt like we did a very good job defensively. We had opportunities to score – the ball was bouncing around out there.”
The Hornets came into the season as the back-to-back defending JD tournament champs, but exit this year with a sour taste in their mouth. With the bulk of his roster returning next year, Pugh is hopeful that his players will remember this game for a quite some time.
“I told our team, ‘Guys, remember this feeling. If you don’t want to feel this way next year then you’ve got a long offseason to work on your game, to work on your strength and conditioning’” Pugh said.
Monticello plays Fluvanna County on Monday at Western Albemarle at 6:30 p.m. in the semifinals.
