FREMONT – The Little Giants can’t say they didn’t have their chances. But all the missed opportunities make the final result all the more disappointing.
Dylan Brady looks toward the Clay goal as the Little Giants attack in the first half Tuesday.
Fremont Ross controlled long periods of its match Tuesday against Oregon Clay, but a couple of their own miscues provided the difference as Clay took advantage of more of its chances and held on for a 2-1 win.
“We didn’t finish the ball, plain and simple,” Ross coach Alex Coressel said. “Counterattacking, when Clay did that, they got to us on the first (goal), we were just rusty, plain and simple, and we didn’t play the way we’re capable.”
The first half remained scoreless until late. The Little Giants applied tremendous pressure in the Eagles’ end of the field, but with less than two minutes remaining before halftime, Clay pushed the ball up field and managed a shot that found the corner of the net for a 1-0 lead.
The game remained 1-0 through more than 20 minutes of the second half. Ross had a golden opportunity to tie the game with a shot from 10 yards out and the Eagle goalkeeper out of position but the shot sailed high over the goal and was emblematic of the Little Giants’ luck on offense.
“It’s not just that one, there were two or three others throughout the game that were point-blank,” Coressel said. “We just have to finish the ball and we didn’t do it.”
Three minutes after Ross’ near-miss, Clay added to its lead.
“We had everybody kind of not doing their job,” Coressel said. “As soon as we clear the ball we have to have everybody push up. We didn’t. We kind of stood there. Their guy hung out on the back line and it happened to be right there.”
Isaac Minor fires a shot on goal in the first half against Clay Tuesday.
Ross, however, finally cashed in to get back in the game just two minutes later. Tim Mosser sent a nice through-ball past the Eagle defense and sprung Dylan Brady, who buried the ball in the goal with 13:15 remaining.
From there, the push was on for Ross to get the equalizer.
Ross’ best chance to knot the game came with 90 seconds to play when Brady Wolfe fired a shot low and aiming for the corner of the net, but the shot was swallowed up by the Clay keeper.
“We switched one defender out and tried to shove more guys forward,” Coressel said. “We had the opportunities but we didn’t get on the end of it. We weren’t linking passes very well all day so that kind of hurt us at the end. We were trying to play through-balls and they stuffed enough guys back there and we were kind of running into a wall.”
Caleb Bennison
Ross senior goalkeeper Caleb Bennison made back-to-back point-blank saves less than three minutes part in the final six minutes of the game to keep the deficit just one. Bennison, a first-year keeper in his first year on team, helped Ross regularly go from defense to offense with impressive distance on his dropkick.
“Caleb, coming in first year in net as a senior has been phenomenal,” Coressel said. “Some of the nuances of the game he doesn’t exactly know, but he’s a bulldog kid that will go out there, play his butt off and do everything he can do to help us out. He’s gotten better every game and that’s going to be huge coming down the stretch, we’ve got eight games in the next three weeks.”
The loss drops Ross to 5-4 overall with a 2-3 league record. The Little Giants return to action Thursday at home against Mansfield St. Peter’s at 5 p.m.