Knights survive Berean scare in 2nd round

Halloween is still two weeks away but Greenfield School varsity boys soccer players got a bit of a scare Thursday, Oct. 17, in the second round of the North Carolina Independent Schools Athletic Association 2-A playoffs.

The No. 6-seeded Knights and unseeded Berean Baptist were scoreless late in the second half before Greenfield sophomore Grayson Coulter headed a ball into the net off a free kick by junior Landyn Coolbaugh with less than 16 minutes to play for the game’s only goal.

Greenfield, now 14-7-1 overall, advances to the third round Saturday at No. 3 Fayetteville Academy (15-0).

Greenfield first-year head coach George Venturella wasn’t worried about his defense Thursday with the Knights working on their 10th overall shutout and third straight. But the offense needed to settle down instead of sending long passes to forwards Cooke Rhodes and Coolbaugh.

“Their record definitely did not match their skill set,” Venturella said of the Bulldogs (7-14), who spilled Faith Christian 4-3 in overtime in the first round. “They were big, physical, fast team overall, and a team from Fayetteville is one that you expect to have those kind of qualities. So it took us to reconvene at halftime and realize that we just need to play simple soccer and not just kick the ball up the field and hope Cooke and Landyn can run.

“Once we started playing the ticky tack in the middle, simple passes on the ground, find each other through and just draw the fouls and get stuff going. I mean, our free kicks are dangerous and just as dangerous as us with the ball at our feet. So definitely, it took us to calm down a little bit at halftime, reconvene where we were at and then once we got that part down, our defensive side is always our strength.”

Senior goalkeeper Kel Winstead got the shutout but only with four Berean shots to clean up, compared to 20 taken by the Knights. The five-man Greenfield back line of Simon Quinn, Noah Wright and Garrison Wester in the middle with Zach Owens on the right side and Addison Wall on the left has evolved into an offensive starter as well.

‘It’s grown beyond what you could expect within it, just the chemistry between the guys to be able to know what each other is going to do each individual play coming down the field, regardless of the team that’s coming against them,” Venturella said. “But not only that is that’s where the attack starts. They’re able to find those key passes down the channels and the passing lanes all the way through, and majority of our play starts from the center back to be able to move the ball forward.”

While taking its lumps from 3-A members of its 2-A/3-A Coastal Plain Independents Conference — Coastal Christian, John Paul II Catholic and Cape Fear Academy — Greenfield also played a rugged nonconference schedule that included a 3-2 loss at Fayetteville Academy on Sept. 25.

Venturella believes that experience will keep his guys grounded for the rematch.

“The key is just playing our game and not let them get to us,” he said of the third-seeded Eagles. “On the mental aspect, Fayetteville teams tend to have some chatty players all the way through, and that’s just a part that the boys have definitely grown to overcome throughout the season from where we started the season. Now, the mental game is there, and we’re able to focus on what we actually have to do and just play our game. So whenever we’re playing Greenfield soccer, it looks good, it’s simple and we find the key players all the way through and they play as a team — that’s the main thing. So as long as no one’s trying to do more than they need to, and they do their role well, we should walk out of there fine. It’s when we try to overcompensate for something else, is when we run into those issues. That’s, unfortunately, what happened last time and just hoping that we’re able to hold them all the way through.”

And hopefully less scary for the Knights.

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