FORTVILLE — Battling the heat and elements on Tuesday evening, Mt. Vernon and Delta boys soccer teams also battled for an important early-season Hoosier Heritage Conference win and the traveling conference bell.
With the temperature in the low 90s and a heat index of nearly 100 at kickoff, the Marauders retained the trophy with a 2-1 win at Mt. Vernon High School.
Five total games into their season, the win moved Mt. Vernon to 2-0 in the HHC.
For the Marauders and head coach Matt Mayhew, getting early conference victories are key.
“These are important. We’re starting to get healthy now and these early-season conference victories really help. Delta is a great team,” Mayhew said. “The traveling bell trophy was on the line too. Delta stepped up and fought and our guys responded as well.”
Mt. Vernon junior Charlie Cole, who missed the Marauders first three games, played the hero.
With 6:30 remaining, Cole broke a 1-1 tie and scored what would end up being the game-winner.
Cole used his speed to intercept an errant pass by the Delta defense, and broke free to slip a shot past goalkeeper Elijah Bell.
“I saw them looking back to pass and they made a mistake,” Cole said. “I was able to get right on goal and get the shot to the right corner.”
The goal was his second of the night.
With just over eight minutes to go in the first half, Cole controlled the ball outside of the box, made a quick move to his right, and beat Bell up and to his left to open the scoring.
“He’s Charlie, we expect great things out of him,” Mayhew said. “People know who he is now, so he has to be even more special or other guys have to step up around him.”
The goals were Cole’s team-leading fourth and fifth of the season, with all five coming in conference games. He scored a hat-trick in the win over New Castle.
“I had to sit out two games, so that wasn’t a great start, but it’s just been coming back from that and doing the best I can and working together with the team,” Cole said, “It’s just moving forward from this now. It wasn’t a great game that we played, so we can take that and move on from it. It was a great team effort though and Delta played great.”
The two Cole goals were the only miscues by Bell on a night in which the Mt. Vernon attack pressured him often.
Just before a water break at the 20-minute mark of the first half, Bell denied three straight point-blank shots from the Marauders to keep things scoreless.
It was the best scoring chance from either side up to that point, and the only real threat in the half other than Cole’s goal.
The Mt. Vernon defense held the Eagles to just one first-half shot.
“That back four and keeper are all starters from last year and are a pretty cohesive group, so that’s something that we rely on as one of our strengths,” Mayhew said. “They have to hold us while we go and get our goals. We depend on them a lot.”
In the second half, the attack opened up for both sides.
Early in the frame, Colby Smith found Luke Alka in front of the net, but it was denied by Bell, a few minutes later Bell jumped to catch a Marauders cross into the box and deny a scoring chance, and down the stretch, Bell made a few more big saves.
He denied both Smith and Alka shots around the 25-minute mark and stopped Brady Webber in a one-on-one opportunity later on.
Delta’s game-tying goal came on a penalty kick with 11 minutes remaining after a collision between Mt. Vernon goalkeeper Will Keppler and Delta’s Cooper Pierce.
Keppler was called for the foul and Pierce took the penalty shot and beat the Marauder goalkeeper to his left.
“It looked like a 50-50,” Mayhew said. “You never want to give one of those up, but we responded after that and found a way to get the go-ahead goal.”
Mt. Vernon hosts Fishers, ranked No. 10 in the Class 3A Indiana Soccer Coaches Association poll, Thursday at 7:30 p.m.
