By PAUL GOTHAM
ROCHESTER, N.Y. — Nico Coria supplied the stops while Kieran Papalia found the back of the net twice, and the Honeoye Falls-Lima Cougars remained perfect in league play with a 3-0 victory over the Greece Odyssey Leopards, Thursday.
Coria registered his third straight shutout and seventh of the season as the Cougars improved to 6-0 in league play with their seventh consecutive triumph.
“He was fantastic,” HF-L coach Mike Merrill said. “He made some stellar saves, was aggressive and really held the fort down for us.”
The junior keeper was at his best in the 66th minute. With the Cougars clinging to a 2-0 lead, Odyssey’s Dylan Ange took advantage of a mistake in the HF-L backline for a breakaway attempt. Coria made a sliding save at the top of the 18-yard box.
“I waited for him to have a bad touch, and I just jumped on it,” Coria explained. “I had made a few saves in the game, and I didn’t want to lose my clean sheet. I figured at that point we were probably going to win, but the clean sheet is what’s important to me and obviously my team is important too and I wanted them to have a clean sheet.”
Coria frustrated the Leopards earlier in the stanza with a save just outside the six-yard box.
Odyssey’s Josue Fontanez led a breaking Jared Scott with a diagonal pass along the right flank, but Coria was there again with the stop.
“He’s great at saving the ball, but when he’s aggressive he’s one of the better goalies around the area,” Merrill stated. “He can do that all the time.”
HF-L controlled the game early. Both Papalia and Parker Hotchkiss rang the post in the first 15 minutes, and Odyssey goalkeeper, Vince Alongi, turned away a pair or early attempts.
“He kept us in it with a couple early saves,” said Greece Odyssey catch Scott Mikulski. “Which is what you want from your goalie.”
Odyssey shifted momentum in the latter stages of the first half. Fontanez drilled the crossbar in the 29th minute. Moments later, Ange had a pair of opportunities but to no avail.
“There were three or four opportunities we had,” Mikulski commented. “If we score those goals, it’s a completely different game.”
Papalia broke through for the Cougars in the 38th minute when teammate Roth Wetzel got to the touch line and delivered a service that Papalia tucked in the near post.
“It was really important we got that goal before half because we had a lot of opportunities and didn’t capitalize on them,” Merrill said. “Getting that lead at half was important.”
Nick Gilmore doubled HF-L’s lead in the 53rd minute.
“Next goal was really crucial, thankfully we got it,” Merrill noted. “We weathered the storm. They’re a really good team (Odyssey). They got some really tough players who are potential scorers.”
Papilla’s header in the 73rd minute closed the scoring.
“That’s a good team, no doubt about it,” Mikulski said of HF-L. “They were playing a formation where we had to move some things around. They push so many players up front. We talked about how we were going to mark so we weren’t losing our midfielder playing as a defender all the time. Sometimes we had two forwards versus four defenders. We still had some opportunities, but there was a huge gap. They were moving the ball, and we were just dragging get back.”
HF-L improved to 9-2 overall and 6-0 in league play. Odyssey fell to 6-3-1 and 4-1. The same two teams meet on October 7th.
“We’re looking forward to that,” Mikulski said of the rematch. “It was our first loss in the division. I’m glad they stuck it to us because it will stick in our minds for next week.”
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