Canby Herald Online

Cougars open league with shutout

Canby takes down Newberg in 3-0 victory last week at PGE Park in Portland

• By: John Baker  
• Published: 9/24/2009 2:58:15 PM

Canby’s offense demonstrated a high level of potency on Tuesday, Sept. 15 in a 3-0 win in boys soccer over Newberg at PGE Park.

The win pushed the Cougars record to 2-0-1 on the young season, but more importantly, gave a hint of what they hope to do this season offensively.

“We came out pretty hard,” said coach Scott Burkhart. “That’s the kind of offense we’ve been teaching the boys this year — very fast-paced and high pressure. We have a lot of skill and speed, so we can push pretty hard.

“This was not a bad little win,” she added. “Newberg is probably going to be down a bit t this year, but it’s a nice win to get under our belts and gain some confidence.”

The Cougars’ pressure took a toll in the 20th minute when sophomore midfielder Nestor Duran sent a cross through the box that Sawyer Meek slapped into the box on the first touch.

“It was nice to get on the board early,” said Burkhart.

The coach had his team make a couple of adjustments at halftime and that opened the game up considerably in the second half.

“When we play a formation like the one Newberg was using, we want to attack the flanks and that’s something we adjusted at the half,” said the coach.

After watching the Cougars control the action for nearly all of the first half, Newberg came out hard to open the second stanza and threatened a couple of times. However, the pace Canby was playing at soon took its toll and the Cougars started getting more opportunities.

“They (Newberg) really started to struggle to keep up with the pace we were playing at,” said Burkhart.

At about the 65-minute mark, center-midfielder Eddie Sanchez, who moments earlier had just missed over the crossbar, delivered a shot past the keeper to make it 2-0. Three minutes later, Alvaro Mendez played a nice pass across the box to Oscar Zamora, who quickly and efficiently made it 3-0.

“We had a pretty good all-around defensive effort,” Burkhart said. “We attacked them with our side defenders and with the formation Newberg was using, they would have time to really push the ball forward. Once we got the ball outside, we were very dangerous and attacked the flanks over and over.”

Burkhart commended the play of Evan Grover and Tim Judge, his outside backs, who kept the ball pushing forward time and time again.

“Overall, we did some really good things,” said Burkhart.

Cougars throttle South Albany 7-2 on Sept. 12: Canby got its initial win of the 2009 campaign Saturday in a 7-2 rampage against South Albany.

The Rebels generally occupy the lower levels of the Mid-Valley Conference, so the win was not an artistic one.

“We got a bunch of goals and we got them in bunches,” is how Burkhart described it. “One of their goals came off a penalty kick (hand ball in the box). It was a pretty sloppy game all-around. It’s hard to elevate your play to a high level when you play a team like that. We really only scored one nice goal. We just wanted to keep everyone healthy and give our bench kids some time.”

The big test comes Thursday at home against McMinnville, a team that’s habitually first or second in the Pacific Conference standings. Game time is 6:30 p.m.

Lincoln shuts out Cougars 3-0: Thursday’s 3-0 loss at Lincoln on Sept. 17 didn’t sit well with coach Burkhart. He’d hoped to see good signs in his team if it got down, but when it happened, those signs didn’t materialize.

“They snuck a goal in early on us in the first 20 minutes, but we were both pretty evenly matched teams,” said Burkhart. “The possession was going back and forth and so were the opportunities.”

Down 1-0, Burkhart challenged his team at halftime to step it up and play with urgency. He said that for the first 10 minutes of the second half, it looked like that was happening. Then, his team went flat.

“We just slowly faded,” he said. “It wasn’t necessarily one player, just sort of a unit problem with us.”

The game stayed 1-0 until about the 80th minute Lincoln tallied two more goals in short order. Burkhart wasn’t happy with the way things finished.

“With about 10 minutes to go in the game, that’s kind of the time we want to shine, but we let in two goals,” he said. “There were breakdowns on a lot of different levels.

“I was interested to see how we responded when they scored on us and clearly, we didn’t respond the way I’d like to have seen. We didn’t show a sense of urgency or any intensity. Our style of offense is predicated on stringing passes together and we just sort of resorted to a panic state, especially in the last 15 to 20 minutes.”

Burkhart said the play of Evan Grover at outside defense, against a very talented forward, was solid all game long and that Dakota Dillon off the bench provided a bit of a spark.

“We get a break and don’t play until Thursday, so I hope the boys can learn from this one,” said Burkhart. “McMinnville will be one of those top teams in our league. Hopefully, we can find some heart and desire before Thursday.”

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