The Chattanooga Christian School Chargers soccer team defeated the East Hamilton Hurricanes on Saturday afternoon in a down to the wire thriller that ended 1-0. East Hamilton held the home field advantage, however, CCS showed up ready to make a statement.
CCS played with their 4-3-3 formation that used a center attacking midfielder to control the possession. This worked well for the Chargers due to the skilled play making ability of Josh Grant and Lyndon Tucker in the midfield. They moved the ball swiftly to keep the Hurricanes chasing the ball. This proved to work and gave them a multitude of chances to score. Unfortunately, their luck just did not seem to be there.
East Hamilton played with the classic 4-4-2 formation; except they used a diamond midfield to give them more options on both sides of the ball. Carlos Duran was their main playmaker in the attacking midfield position. The rest of the team held a defensive shape to lock down the chargers. The Canes weren’t able to find anything to work for them on offense. They had the talent on the ball, yet they failed to get the ball in the box.
The first half went scoreless for both sides. It seemed as though CCS would score close to twenty times, but nothing came of it. They held possession and rarely turned the ball over. They also utilized their throw-ins due to Urban Tucker having a strong delivery. This put them in the box time and time again. A lot of the credit goes to the Canes goalkeeper, Isaiah Yuzvak. He made several spectacular saves that kept East Hamilton in the game and took them into halftime with the score knotted at 0-0.
The second half was filled with attacks from both sides this go around. East Hamilton let up on defense, hoping to break through a tired CCS defense. It almost worked several times as they were finally able to get the ball in front of the goal and test the Chargers'keeper. With still no luck from either team the frustration became noticeable. The physicality of the game picked up on both ends. The referee had a little trouble pulling things together at first. Eventually they calmed down and no cards were needed.
Finally, after close to ten minutes into the second half the Charges found their spot and netted the first and only goal of the game. Following a few back to back corners CCS was able to put one in the net when Josh Grant found himself in the right place at the right time. The corner was taken and bounced around in the box. The keeper tried to get a hand on it but could not manage to put his hands on it. The ball landed right at Grant’s feet, and he crushed it into the wide open goal.
The rest of the game was played like it had been with a lot of shots taken without results. East Hamilton was doing whatever yhey could to find the tying goal, but without success. The match ended with CCS on the positive side of a 1-0 advantage and anoother "W" in the right side of the ledger..
Chargers' head coach, Tyler Robertson, spoke about his perspective on the game and how they plan to move on from here, “We are playing really well at the right time. Obviously, the result 1-0 is good. We want to see more goals go in the back of the net, but from the offensive side and the attacking third, besides leaving a couple of goals out there, we looked really complete. We dominated possession and made good decisions. We didn’t lose the ball in dangerous areas and good teams win when you do that. It was fun to watch. There was good soccer played today for sure.”
CCS will go on to play McCallie next week on Tuesday. They have already had a hard schedule and McCallie won't make it any easier for the Chargers, to be sure.
Game Summary:
CCS 0 1 -- 1
East Hamilton 0 0 -- 0
Goal Scorers:
CCS- Josh Grant.
(email Alex McElyea at alexmcelyea26@gmail.com)