Bearcats fend off Patriot surge

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Jack Byrnes didn’t necessarily need his teammates.

Chase Beck did.

Byrnes scored three times and Beck stopped a second-half barrage by the Jay County High School boys soccer team, which dropped its season opener 3-1 Tuesday to Beck, Byrnes and the Muncie Central Bearcats.

“Defense really had to stand tall under a lot of pressure,” Muncie Central coach Shea Hill said. “Jay did an excellent job. There was no quit in that team.

“Team goes down three-nil, it’s just as easy for them (to give up). There’s no mailing it in on that team.”

Byrnes sandwiched two goals on penalty kicks around a free kick from midfield. Jay County (0-1) appeared to accept defeat as its players were seen hanging their heads after the third tally came in the 49th minute.

But just 1 minute, 46 seconds, later Derrian Riojas buried a loose ball in the goalie box past Beck for his team’s first goal of the season.

“Jay did a really good job,” Hill said. “They were sending bodies. There was no way they were going to miss that.”

Having broken the shutout, the Patriots kept putting pressure on Beck and the Bearcats (1-0). They just couldn’t trim the deficit.

“The rest of that game we had control the whole time,” said JCHS coach Brad Horn, whose team travels to Heritage on Thursday to open Allen County Athletic Conference play. “We just could not finish anything. We had the touches, we had the opportunities.”

In the 56th minute, the Patriots were in position to pull within one goal as Beck was pulled out of his box attempting to pay a free ball. Gio Perod and Riojas weren’t able to get a clean shot on goal, and Muncie Central’s Sam Baule kicked the ball away as it was a foot away from crossing the goal line.

“They had an incredible save on one of those goals by a defender,” Horn said.

Beck finished with 13 saves, all but three of which were in the second half.

“I thought Chase did extremely well,” Hill said. “Great positioning and things like that.”

Muncie Central, a sectional rival of Jay County, got on the board in the 11th minute as Byrnes beat JCHS freshman goalkeeper Ian Ruiz on a PK, awarded after a hand ball in the penalty area. Byrnes went to the lower left corner past the diving Patriot youngster.

Less than five minutes into the second half, Byrnes lofted a free kick from just inside midfield that plunked off the crossbar in the upper left corner.

“He hit a beautiful kick from distance,” Hill said. “That thing must’ve curved 30 feet. To hit the underside of the crossbar and going in, the keeper was in good position, he just couldn’t do anything about it.”

Horn had a slightly different explanation of the play.

“The whole time Ian didn’t really react,” he said. “From the beginning he thought it was going to be way over (the net).”

Ruiz made nine saves in the first game of his career.

A foul in the 18-yard box gave the Bearcats another PK, and Byrnes completed the hat trick by putting it in the same spot as his first.

“No real goal they had was an opportunity where our defense broke down,” Horn said. “It was more unfortunate plays.”



Junior varsity

Jay County allowed the first goal of the game but rallied for a 9-3 victory over Muncie Central.

Orlando Castro led the Patriots with a pair of goals. Flint Schmiesing, Hunter Shumaker, Rube Gutierrez, Jayden Maymi, Alex McFarland, Brinnin Wasson and Brody Auker also scored.