In a flash of legs, Coppell senior forward Luis Mendez sees an opening and cuts into the Flower Mound box, taking a chance and shooting.
He scores.
Friday, the Coppell boys soccer team defeated Flower Mound, 2-1, in its last District 5-6A home match.
The district Cowboys started the first half strong, with junior forward Liam Spiller scoring the match’s first goal to put Coppell in the lead 1-0 after a long pass by junior defender Brooks Kaiser.
“The breakaway was good,” Spiller said. “We’ve been working on it at practice a lot and it was a great ball from Brooks that put us through, so we went to halftime 1-0 up.”
Coppell ended the first 40 minutes with three shots on goal, forcing Flower Mound to clear the ball five times.
“In the first half we came out with a lot of confidence,” Coppell coach Stephen Morris said, “I was a little nervous and I told them that it’s good to be confident, but they were a little too excited, and I was worried it was gonna lead to some dangerous moments.”
Twenty-two minutes into the second half, Flower Mound attackers made a run up the Coppell right side, where junior goalkeeper Chase Anderson saved a shot from Flower Mound freshman midfielder Sagan Pandey only for it to be put into the net by Flower Mound junior midfielder Andrew Muniu, tying the match.
“After the equalizer we were a little bit brought down because I would expect that we had more control over the game,” Mendez said. “Our defense had no hope, but me as a captain and everyone up top had a motivation to go for an extra goal.”
Coppell started to make runs up Flower Mound’s wings, hoping to cross the ball into the box or score off of a set piece, but these efforts remained futile.
With less than five minutes left in the match, Mendez broke through the Flower Mound right wing and cut into the box, taking a shot and scoring the match winner.
“I thought, ‘I’m going to go right, so I cut it to the left,’ and shot,” Mendez said. “It luckily went in and surprised Flower Mound.”
The Cowboys finished the second half with two shots on goal, forcing Flower Mound to clear the ball six times in their late game offensive fervor.
With playoffsm looming, the Cowboys look to be in their best shape and perfect any defensive errors.
“We had a little moment where Flower Mound had some good chances,” Morris said. “They weren’t really that dangerous for the most part and then the moment just happened where we kind of fell asleep.”
The Cowboys play Flower Mound Marcus on March 17.
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