Hounds drop home match to KC East 6-1

Communication figures to be an even greater point of emphasis in upcoming Maryville soccer practices.

Maryville head boys soccer Stuart Collins cited several breakdowns in communication that led to uncontested goals for Kansas City East in a 6-1 loss Thursday at Donaldson Park.

East scored four unanswered first half goals, including three within an eight minute stretch, and the last two in the second half after Maryville scored its only goal of the match.

Maryville, which lost Tuesday to Kansas City Northeast 9-2, fell to 7-11 on the season.

"We really need to learn how to communicate with each other," said Collins. "We really do. Gosh, this is probably the ugliest game we've played in a long time."

The play that epitomized Maryville's day and sealed their fate in the match occurred mid-way through the second half.

East's keeper Jhonny Rojas launched a goalie kick with the wind that forced Hound defender Andrew Wiederholt to retreat to his own goal. A mix-up between he and keeper Ethan Calfee on who should handle the ball caused a turnover and East's Omar Sanchez punched in an easy goal to make it 5-1 in the 63rd minute.

"Andrew was the shield and Ethan walked up and tried to kick it out of the box and it went off Andrew backwards," said Collins. "It just kind of took the air out of us. It's kind of hard to come back from that when you're down."

East would tack on another goal from Hassan Adan on a left-footed shot to the right-side of the net in the 81st minute.

It was his second of the match.

Adan gave East the early advantage with a goal in the 8th minute.

Maryville held the score at 1-0 and missed a quality chance of its own to tie before East took control.

In the 28th minute, Abdullahi Mohamed located an unmarked Jacob Kisner behind the Hound defense and he placed a line drive shot past Calfee to make it 2-0.

After Maryville had a direct kick opportunity go for naught, Abdullahi put East ahead 3-0 in the 33rd minute by floating a shot over the head of Calfee for a goal.

Two minutes later, East scored again on a Kristo Garcia rocket to the back of the net after a direct kick got deflected back to him.

"The guys just didn't cover everybody," said Collins. "There was a couple goals down here where we'd have two defenders step up to go get the ball and he'd slide the ball through to a guy. One of those should have stayed back and covered. Communication, we're not talking about that stuff. As much as we emphasize it in practice and everything else, at this time of the year, we got to be better than that."

Maryville put together its best stretch of play during the opening 20 minutes of the second half.

The Hounds generated plenty of scoring chances and turned one of them into a goal by senior Zach Miller in the 55th minute.

With a defender trailing him, Miller simply poked in a pass right in front of the net from Danner Jacobsen.

Top goal scorer Lane Hermelink, who took the direct kick in the first half, had two shots from close range that were saved in the second half.

He put four of Maryville's 10 shots on goal and five of their 14 overall, but had nothing to show for it.

"We put 15 minutes of pressure on them against the wind which is our favorite," said Collins. "We were there. Of all people to miss like three goals today. Lane put them right at the keeper from the six. That's just unusual. That tells you what happened today. I would've never expected that, and I don't think anybody else would either."

Maryville has five matches, all against MEC schools left in the regular season, and three are next week.

The Hounds travel to LeBlond Monday before hosting Chillicothe Tuesday.

Sophomore forward Mitchell Worthington didn't play against KC East and may miss the rest of the season with a fractured orbital bone.