Sam Brown
With six starters sidelined for Saturday’s regular-season finale against Terre Haute South, Columbus North boys soccer coach Andy Glover wanted to give plenty of kids an opportunity to get on the pitch.
Glover played almost every available varsity and JV player — 36 in all — in an 8-0 victory that wrapped up second place in Conference Indiana.
Eight different players scored the eight goals for the Class 3A No. 11 Bull Dogs (9-5-1, 3-2).
“I was happy for the team,” Glover said. “It was a total team effort. What I really liked about today was that, regardless of who was in the competition, they played a brand of soccer that resembles Columbus North.”
North scored five times in the first half, the first coming a little more than a minute into the game when Jonah Sipes finished a pass from Jonny Garcia Renteria. Jezreel Rivera scored off an assist from Luccas Peda in the 21st minute, and Sam Brown finished a rebound off the keeper from a shot by Peda in the 22nd minute. Garcia Renteria scored off a pass from Miguel Salomao in the 37th minute, and Ben Stevens netted an unassisted goal in the 39th minute.
With mostly JV players taking the field in the second half, Salomao scored in the 44th minute, Parker Gribbins finished a pass from Garcia Renteria in the 49th minute and Manuel Valle added the final tally in the 62nd minute.
“It was a good way to ratchet up things we needed to fix, see where our weaknesses might have been and work on them in practice,” Brown said. “It was just a fun atmosphere. I enjoyed being a ball boy the second half. It was a good day for all of us to just kind of hang around and play a sport that we all like to play.”
The Bull Dogs outshot the Braves 50-1, putting 28 shots on goal to one for Terre Haute South.
Four North goalkeepers combined on the shutout. Noah Marsh played the first half in goal and did not face a shot. The second half was split between Jaden Andrade, Sujay Pingale and Armando Duran Blanc. Pingale stopped the lone Braves shot.
Starting goalkeeper Juan Jose Salcedo Calderon was one of four Bull Dogs out with injuries. Two others sat out of caution of accumulating a fifth yellow card for the season, which would cause them to have to miss the sectional opener.
“We did the best we can with what we have,” Glover said. “It went OK today. I hope we can say the same on Wednesday.”
North will play in the Center Grove Sectional semifinals Wednesday against the winner of Monday’s opener between Columbus East and 3A No. 1 Center Grove.
“It’s been an interesting season,” Glover said. “I think that the team overall is in a pretty decent place, but they also know that in the postseason, nothing is going to be given to them. So they’ll have to earn every win that they get going forward.”
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