Before his squad’s game Saturday against Sunrise Christian, Emporia High soccer coach Steve Pearson told his team that it needed to match the EHS football team’s performance from Friday night when the Spartans beat Topeka High 35-0 to earn their first victory of the season.
Pearson’s troops did their best to match the football team’s dominance, as the Spartans (1-3) beat Sunrise Christian 10-0 after the game was called in the final minutes due to the mercy rule.
The victory is also the Spartans’ first of the season.
“The win felt great,” Pearson said. “It wasn’t as hard a team as we had been facing, but a lot of our guys got in. At least we have something to talk about (today) when we get back to practice.”
Six different Spartans got in the scoring act Saturday, with four players recording two goals a piece.
Brian Dorsey started the scoring in the eighth minute on an assist from Alex Guevara, and 10 minutes later, scored again on an assist from Gary Rivera. Adam Sanchez and Adrian Trujillo rounded out the first-half scoring with goals in the 27th and 34th minutes, respectively.
Juan Carlos Rangel kept up the offensive onslaught on a penalty kick five minutes into the second half.
Guevara and Trujillo teamed up for Emporia High’s next three goals — a shot by Guevara on an assist from Tujillo in the 71st minute, a header by Trujillo from Guevara in the 76th minute and another goal by Guevara on the third of Trujillo’s four assists in the 78th minute.
Taylor Anderson finished out the scoring with two goals in the 79th and 80th minutes, the last coming with just 11 seconds left to force the game to end by mercy rule.
In all, Emporia High had 31 shots on goal to Sunrise Christian’s one.
“It’s hard to say who stood out,” Pearson said. “The game was a little lopsided, but Sunrise did not give up. They fought to the end and really hung in there.
“We can now relax and work on what we need to improve on. We can go into league play on the rise.”
Emporia High begins league play at 4 p.m. Tuesday against Hayden in Topeka.
Reynolds, Delmott give Spartans 2 top-2 finishes
At about the two-mile mark of Saturday’s Emporia Invitational girls cross country race, it looked as if Emporia High junior Michaela Reynolds would need just one week to avenge a loss to Lawrence’s Kelly Renfro from a week ago.
Renfro beat Reynolds last Saturday at the Manhattan Invitational in the girls 4-kilometer race, and with a less than a half-mile to go, Reynolds had separated herself from Renfro and Manhattan’s Marley Crusch.
Coming around the turn into the final straightaway, Reynolds had a four-second lead on Renfro, and it looked as if Reynolds was going to reverse her fortunes from a week ago and beat Renfro.
But after running a near flawless race, Reynolds faded, which allowed Renfro to pass Reynolds with just 50 meters to go to grab the Emporia Invitational individual title.
“I kept trying to break her (Renfro) the whole time,” said Reynolds, who finished in a time of 14 minutes, 49 seconds. “At one point, coach said I had four meters on her, but I just used up all my energy and I just sort of died at the end and couldn’t keep up.”
Despite finishing second to Renfro — who finished in a time of 14:46 — for the second time in as many races, Reynolds, the 2005 5A state champion, still pulled through with one of her best races ever. Her time set a new personal record by nearly 15 seconds.
“Michaela did a beautiful job of coming up the hill late in the race where most people tend get to where they want to slow down, and she continued to push and opened up her lead,” coach Mark Stanbrough said. “It just wasn’t enough. Kelly Renfro is an outstanding runner. Michaela still ran one of her best races ever.”
Not far behind Reynolds was senior Layne Moore, who finished fourth in a time of 15:07. Moore ran with the lead pack of Reynolds, Renfro and Crusch for most of the race before the top three created a slight lead.
Moore said she was pleased with her performance in just her second race back from a 2005 season in which she suffered a hip injury.
“I got up with the frontrunners and I hung with them as long as I could,” Moore said. “I felt a kick at the end, and overall I’m pretty happy. I’m getting my confidence back up in cross country since all last year I was injured.”
With Jenna Stanbrough finishing 14th and Heather Coe placing 20th, the Emporia High girls finished second with 61 points, just five points behind Manhattan, which also won the team title a week ago.
This week, however, was a much different race, Stanbrough said.
“Last week, I don’t think we ever got in the race. This week, we were in the race,” he said. “We were probably winning the race through about two miles. They passed our third, fourth and fifth runners and moved up. We were much better today.”
On the boy’s side, junior Asher Delmott ran another solid race, finishing six seconds behind the winner, Great Bend’s Sloane Kern, with a time of 16:41.
“I’m pretty pleased with the place that I got. I could go faster, but overall I felt pretty good,” Delmott said. “He (Kern) did get second at state last year, and I knew he would be tough to catch. After I got into second though, I just thought that I couldn’t let anyone pass me.”
The next Emporia High finisher behind Delmott was Mike Robinson in 12th. The Spartans as a team finished a distant second behind St. Thomas Aquinas. The Saints won the title with 40 points, as the their top five runners took positions six through 10.