Steers soccer earns first win of season over Sweetwater

After giving up a comeback and taking a loss in their first game a few days before, the Graham Steers earned their first win of the season in dominant fashion with a 7-0 win over the Sweetwater Mustangs.

Graham had shown a lot of solid aspects to the team in the first game and those were all on full display during the win Friday, Jan. 5 against Sweetwater. The Steers executed their offense at a high level while allowing next to nothing on defense.

The complete performance helped Graham move to 1-1 on the young season as they’ll look to build off of this win.
It took about 10 minutes for the Steers to find the back of the net and it helped that the first goal came on a penalty kick. After senior Bryan Sanchez got fouled in the box, fellow senior Holton Weatherman made the Mustangs pay with a strike to the goalie’s left side to take a 1-0 lead.

Not more than two minutes after that, the Steers regained possession of the ball and doubled their lead as senior Jesus Lucio made a couple of moves past his defenders in the middle of the field and fired a strike past the keeper for a 2-0 Graham lead.

The Steers’ offense appeared to be at its peak in these moments as again, after just under, two minutes later, junior Easton Hedge took a corner kick that was hit out by a Sweetwater defender right to Weatherman, who fired a shot with his left foot into the goal for the 3-0 advantage.

After not possessing the ball for a lot of time in the previous match, the Steers dominated time of possession in this one. Sweetwater hardly held the ball for more than a minute each time before Graham regained control.

The closest the Mustangs came to scoring was with about 20 minutes to go in the first half. Sweetwater had a breakaway for the goal, fired a shot that junior goalkeeper Ozzy Trejo blocked, and on the rebound the Mustangs missed wide.

The Steers continued to take shots on goal but had some misses and a few of them got blocked. With under 12 minutes left in the first half, Lucio found an opening in the middle of the field and curved a shot past the keeper’s diving attempt to make it 4-0 for Graham.

Hedge got in on the goal scoring fun with two minutes to go before halftime. He received a pass from Sanchez, gave it one touch and nailed a shot to the top left corner of the goal to make it 5-0 going into the halftime break.

“We did a lot of good things out there. We were taking good outside shots, working the ball through the middle a little bit better today. We didn’t have as much pressure on us as some of the other teams, but we were able to slow the ball down and work on some of the little things,” head coach Tim Wankowicz said. “I was pleased with it. There’s still some things we got to work on. I was able to get some players that haven’t really gotten much playing time in and so that was nice.”

Things slowed down for the Steers in the second half. While they continued to dominate time of possession, the Mustangs had switched keepers at halftime and the new one played better than the first.

It wasn’t until there were eight minutes remaining in the game that Lucio escaped on a breakaway and nailed a shot into the goal. He scored so quickly and fired the ball with such power the goalkeeper didn’t even move.

Only 17 seconds later, the Steers had stolen the ball and sophomore Jace Gill took his turn getting into the scoring column with a nifty goal past two defenders and an angled shot past the goalie.

As the final horn sounded, the Steers had left it all on the field and earned the big 7-0 win to jump start their season.
“I told them I wanted to slow the game down…These guys like to come out and run-and-gun sometimes and really attack hard,” Wankowicz said. “But sometimes that type of play, especially if you play another team that’s fast on a counter attack like Bridgeport or Decatur, you can’t keep up that speed…That’s really what we were trying to do, just try to control the game more.”

The Steers will enter tournament play this weekend as they travel to Palestine for a series of games from Jan.11-13. Their next home match will be Monday, Jan. 15 against Bridgeport at 5:45 p.m.