Giants remain in NCC hunt

Giants remain in NCC hunt

BY MATT WILSON mwilson@chronicle-tribune.com | Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Marion’s Mitchell Diedrich and Huntington North’s Trey Sorg battle for control of the ball during first-half action Tuesday evening at Ballard Field.

The Marion boys’ soccer team did what it needed to do to stay in the hunt for theNorth CentralConference championship.

In a battle between two teams that had one conference loss, the Giants used a four-goal first half to come away with a 4-3 victory over Huntington North on Tuesday at Ballard Field. With thewin, Marion improved to 11-1-1 overall and 5-1 in the NCC. Huntington North dropped to 8-4-1 overall and 4-2 in league play.

Marion joins Richmond and New Castle as the three teams with one NCC loss. The Giants end their conference season on Saturday at Ballard Field against Anderson.

“We did what we needed to do and now we control our own destiny going into Saturday against Anderson,” Marion coach Jorge Berry said.

The Giants scored three goals off Mitchell Diedrich corner kicks in the first 15 minutes of the game. Two of those were headed in by senior Corey Deaton. An Alex Rittenhouse goal put the Giants ahead 4-1 at halftime. Huntington North came back with goals from Tyler Henline and Barik Hiple in the second half.

“We were able to make some progress in the second half and didn’t allow as many corner kicks as we did in the first half,” Huntington North coach Steve Saddington said. “It made things tough on us when we allowed basically three déjà vu goals in the first half, but in the second half we came back and had a better outing.”

The first of those corner kicks was headed in by Jerrin Manuel 31 seconds into the contest.

“It’s very tough on a team mentally when they allow a goal one minute into the contest,” Saddington said. “We were able to come back in the second half, but it took us a while to recover from that in the first half.”

Eleven minutes after Manuel scored on Diedrich’s corner kick, Deidrich had another corner kick. The Giant senior served the ball into the box and it was headed in by Deaton, putting the Giants ahead 2-0.

One minute later, Huntington cut the Giant lead to 2-1 on Isaac Wust’s goal. Just more than a minute after that goal, Marion responded with a Deaton header off a Diedrich corner kick.

“Mitchell really prides himself on his serving and he really brought that to the table tonight,” Berry said. “All of those services are just a result of how hard Mitchell works during practices.”

“Those corner kick goals were just a result of good services and a good job of Marion attacking the goal,” Saddington said. “They also were a result a maybe a little bit of us not being committed to getting to the ball first and getting it out. They just outplayed us to the ball on those corner kicks.”

Rittenhouse scored an unassisted goal with four minutes remaining, putting Marion ahead 4-1.

“This was probably the best game he has played all year,” Berry said of Rittenhouse.

The Giants played most of the second half down a man after a player received a red card.

Henline scored three minutes into the second half to bring the Vikings within 4-2. Hiple scored with 1:15 remaining to get Huntington North within 4-3.

“In the second half, we had some opportunities and were able to take advantage of them,” Saddington said. “Even when Marion was down a man, I thought they played very well.”

Marion’s game against Anderson begins at 11 a.m. Saturday.