The Chanute Blue Comets’ soccer team played the Fort Scott Tigers in the first game of the Coffeyville tournament. Chanute won 2-0 off of two goals from freshman Gregory Lopez. Both of which were assisted by sophomore Kaleb Becannon.
“[Lopez] was just in the right place, right time, playing gorgeous balls up Kaleb. That’s what I saw. I think Kaleb is at the point now where he’s as excited to put in just beautiful assist balls like that, as he is to score. Which is exactly what you need from a kid of his skillset and the type of player he is. That’s what I’m thrilled about,” Chanute’s head coach Adam Wilcox said, “His fantastic work up. And the assist leading to the assist, I think that’s a hockey stat or something, but the pass leading to the assist was really good as well. A really great complete game from the top of our team down to like through the reserves. We played extremely well.”
Although scoreless the Blue Comets played a dominant first twenty minutes of soccer. They were attacking weak sides in the Tigers’ defense and then switching back to the middle when Fort Scott started figuring it out.
“We did a lot of things right. That was probably one of our most complete games. That might be our best game. The first 20 minutes we just looked incredible. We were moving fast, we were moving the ball from space to space and not trying to play from like, a standing person to a standing person, and like, working it up quickly. We looked great,” Wilcox said, “That first 20 was just fantastic play for us. If we could put 80 minutes together at that level, we’ll be extremely hard to beat.”
A key piece in that first twenty for the Blue Comets was junior Lawson Collins. He had many great runs down the left side and was in great position to help Chanute blow right past Fort Scott’s backline.
“Lawson started making some really good outside runs, where he and Moi [Kwek] figured out they could do a 1-2 deep and that looked great. Lawson’s balls swinging in looked awesome.” Wilcox Said
In the second half coach Wilcox was resting a few starters to try to save energy for their second game. While typical Chanute scorers Kwek and Jacob Adams were resting up for a few minutes, Lopez found two of his own in the 57th and 58th minutes off of two outstanding assists from Becannon.
“One of the biggest things we were able to do, especially in a tournament like this, we got a bunch of the starters some rest. Our bench guys played great, Miguel [Ayuso] played great minutes, Andrea [Cuin] played 15 great minutes, Nate [Rodriguez] played a bunch of great minutes. Even Xander [Weilert] and Chris [Rodriguez], like we went deep into our bench and that’s just awesome,” Wilcox said, “Guys that we don’t necessarily need to rely on like game to game, gave us something different today, that we could save those legs for the second game today which is still insane to do we possessed the ball really well so we weren’t playing like chase for two halves.”
Chanute will meet with the Field Kindley Golden Tornadoes in the finals of the tournament at 2 pm.