FORTVILLE — Senior Night festivities are always special.
When you beat a county rival, remain undefeated in conference play, and have 14 seniors on the roster to honor, the night is extra special.
Mt. Vernon’s boys soccer team did all of those things on Thursday night, defeating Greenfield-Central 3-1.
“That’s a credit to these guys. It’s very rare that you get 14 kids to stick through freshman through senior year,” Mt. Vernon head coach Matt Mayhew said. “It’s just special to see the longevity of those guys and the brotherhood that they have. They all want to play for each other, so it was special to get them all in.”
With the win, the Marauders moved to 6-2-1 overall and 5-0 in the Hoosier Heritage Conference. The five conference games are the most of any team, with Pendleton Heights and Shelbyville the only other unbeaten teams at 1-0.
“A lot of these guys play club together, so we know each other pretty well. This is one that could’ve gone either way and we got the job done. That’s the way we’re going to look at it,” Mayhew said. “We’re 5-0 in the conference now. We’ll have our sixth conference game in by Tuesday, so if we can just keep playing the way we are, we feel pretty good.”
In a slow first half that had limited scoring chances on both sides of the field, it was one of the 14 seniors putting Mt. Vernon ahead at the break.
Fourteen minutes into the game, senior Drew Lynch’s speed down the left side of the pitch led to a Marauders corner kick. On the kick, and after a few deflections in the box, the ball found senior Colby Smith’s foot and he beat Greenfield-Central goalkeeper Parker Takach for the 1-0 lead.
“We did a lot of set piece training this week, and Colby was there to put that one in,” Mayhew said.
Later in the half, a Lynch header went just wide of the net and Charlie Cole sent a shot just right of the post for the Marauders, while in the closing minutes, Greenfield-Central’s only first-half shot on goal was saved by senior Will Keppler.
“Really proud of our defenders. We’ve had problems getting to a place where we’re connected back there, but we’ve seen a ton of growth from last game to this game,” Greenfield-Central assistant coach Matt McConnell said. “We keep seeing that growth and that’s what we’re aiming for.”
After the break, the Marauders added two more goals.
Five minutes into the second half, after the first Mt. Vernon shot on goal hit the right post, senior Luke Alka was there to clean it up and tap in the goal for a 2-0 lead.
Ten minutes later, Cole connected on his team-leading 10th goal of the season. He beat multiple defenders and fired a tough, contested shot past Takach to cap off the Mt. Vernon scoring.
“We’re starting to take steps forward and are getting better all the time. You don’t want to give up the goals that we did, but kudos to Mt. Vernon, they’re a talented team and you can tell that they have heavy senior leadership,” McConnell said. “It was a good match.”
Although it was the Marauders scoring twice after the break, the Greenfield-Central attack had its chances.
The Cougars sent five shots on net and were able to tack on a late goal.
“It’s been good the last two games that we’ve seen some more success on the attack,” McConnell said. “We made some adjustments at halftime and the guys did what we asked them to do.”
Midway through the half, Kaiden Hiner sent a long free kick over the head of Mt. Vernon goalkeeper Joe Buchanan.
Buchanan — another one of the Marauders seniors — replaced Keppler in net at the half.
He saved four of the five shots that he saw, including a diving save with 15 minutes to go to maintain the two-goal lead.
“We were able to get all the seniors in. I wish some would’ve got to play more, but they can all at least say that they played,” Mayhew said. “Joe comes in every day and works hard and Will agreed that Joe deserved it. It was nice seeing another senior step up for his buddy and let him go in. Joe did well, that free kick would’ve been hard for anyone to save.”
The Marauders continue HHC play on Tuesday at Shelbyville, while the Cougars look to pick up their first win on Tuesday at Park Tudor.
